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Comment by gcr | Hacker News Reader

I am curious why this name was chosen. Is there any connection between Isaiah and whales? Feels somewhat TempleOS-y.

Alright! I'll copy-paste an explanation I gave prior on Reddit. I legit had no idea this would spark so many conversations hahaha.

"I like to use a pen name generator, and use the generated name for my projects. It makes it easier for me to name things, rather than having to come up with new naming ideas for every new project. And also, I like the idea that every project has a person's name, as if, by using the project, you're getting the help of the person named X (X = Isaiah, Erin, Osmond, any other project I have published)."

I really had never thought of the religious aspect of Isaiah, I just went with a generated pen name I liked.

That makes sense, heh. I had thought you were going for a Moby Dick pun with “Ishmael” or something

To me names are important. I have to find a good name for a project or business before I start. Or at least good-enough. This is a great naming idea. I love it.

I also thought that there's a deeper meaning why you picked the name. Still a cool project. I love how you kept the terminal UI look.

> any connection between Isaiah and whales?

You are thinking of Noah and the Whale.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_and_the_Whale

> You are thinking of Noah and the Whale.

You are more likely thinking of Jonah and the Whale.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonah

Fun fact. In French it’s distinctly not a whale. But a very large fish

I don't know of any translation in English that says whale either: https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Jonah%201%3A17 I think the idea that it was a whale comes mostly from children's adaptations extrapolating from the fact that it says "big fish", whales are big, and the people of the time wouldn't have made a linguistic distinction between fish and fish-like marine mammals.

As long as we are on this line of thought, many children's books like to put an ending that sounds like Jonah was nice and happy at the end, which is not there at all. It ends with him being admonished for valuing the plant but not the 20k people. I use this as a litmus test when looking at children's Bibles.

Also the story of Jericho. "Then they devoted all in the city to destruction, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys, with the edge of the sword." is often glossed over!

Being mammals I firmly believe whales would have been on the ark, so I think Noah would have hung out with them. Some other people on the web disagree. It should come as no surprise this has been discussed.

What a bizarre comment.

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