Yes, Etonomy does sound like a “true word”. However, I can’t see how it conveys “disruptive” principles in itself. Too good a name to waste though, as you later go onto refer to.
That it is something new vaguely implies it could be disruptive, but I agree again the autonomy meaning isn’t going to be readily apparent to people just from the name without any experience with it.
It does imply that it associates with ‘economy’. Some people will incorrectly focus on the thrift definition of economy as an adjective. Incorrect because a name is not an adjective but rather a noun. And for me I think that thrift definition is best expressed with a different word ‘economize’. Whereas, free market thinkers and economists like myself will focus on the market-based system definition of economy as a noun. Wikipedia says:
An economy (from Greek οίκος – "household" and νέμoμαι – "manage") is an area of the production, distribution, or trade, and consumption of goods and services by different agents.
So Etonomy implies — to those who think it through — some novel association to a market-based system. So that already is another factor contributing towards implying it is disruptive and being applicable to an entire economic ecosystem on the Internet. The implied association is somewhat nebulous and amorphous, which is what we want when we are trying to name something for which no existing concise words are precisely applicable. We’re not going to name it ‘permissionless’.
I agree most people will not think it though at the start and thus Etonomy is not a good name for users to first encounter when joining the ecosystem. But it is a great name for the long-term as the meaning of the decentralized, autonomous ecosystem takes form in the brains of users via experience.
Etonomy is something that will grow on people after a while. Hence I don’t think it will work as the main user facing name. It could work as “powered by Etonomy” or “an Etonomy-based dApp” if we opt for such segregation of naming and concepts.
True. Though with the
etono.mydomain iteration from your list, it at least suggests personal sovereignty with the emphasis on ‘my’.
That is a subtle point, gimmicky, and not sure if it is really central and significant. Note I haven’t registered that $50 domain yet. The main advantage of that domain is being the shortest possible, but .com or .org is probably preferred.
With Klik, my first association is with photography, and my second with the click of a mouse […] Good for mass-appeal, but doesn't convey the novel attributes it would offer.
Do Brits not engage much with the informal and more recent definitions of ‘to click’ which Americans seem to know about as quoted below from my up-thread post?
Some definitions of ‘click’:
- become suddenly clear or understandable.
- quickly become friendly or intimate.
- become successful or popular.
All the dictionaries (including the British English ones online) list variants of those alternative definitions. When we say “it clicked” we mean some instant harmony or synergy achieved such as suddenly gaining understanding of something, finding chemistry with other people, or exceptionally smooth (ease of) successful outcome of some endeavor. When we say “everything just clicks”, we mean everything works well.
So those definitions do associate with the USP of decentralization, that users can click with more degrees-of-freedom and not be hamstrung by centralized limitations.
I realize most people don’t think about names abstractly or thoroughly, and first thing they will think about is clicking with a mouse. Yet clicking with a mouse is has very good brand recall, i.e. people will easily remember it. And that didn’t cause a problem for Apple (first thing people including myself thought about it at the inception in the 1980s was either fruit or the bite out of the apple for the Beatles) or Google (first thing people may have thought about at the inception is goggling).
Also the obvious ‘click’ meaning implies it is extremely easy-to-use without tsuris, i.e. point-and-click. Which ties in both with more degrees-of-freedom and users being able to achieve what they want without problems, and also just in general that users like snappy, instant ease.
Klik is appealing visually (my wife thought it looked German with the "K") and when spoken, and is easy to remember.
Agreed and I had the same thought about German or Russian. I read recently that names spelled with the letter k are more strongly associated, e.g. Kommandant. Interestingly from the linked study:
The 2003 study reveals the curiously positive impact of phonetics on brand name success. It found that initial plosives in general (stop consonants such as the aforementioned k, along with p, t, b, d, g sounds) are very effective for brand recall, recognition, and awareness. It is suggested that harder sounds may be useful for indicating harder or more durable characteristics for a product but may conversely be viewed negatively for a product that is ideally soft or light. So it seems that even simple sounds have a role to play in convincing a consumer of a product’s quality, even if we know nothing else about the product.
So that seems to indicate that Groove (or Groovin) would be better name (because g is less hard than the sharp-edged k), but unfortunately the word doesn’t resonate with non-English or ESL (English as a second language) cultures (which is most of the world!). Nevertheless, I still like Groove and (especially considering I was able to register groov.ee and grroove.com) am still considering it for the main user facing compendium of dApps. Note that ‘groove’ (as “in the groove”) also has alternative definitions which are similar to the meaning of ‘click’ to have smooth, hassle-free outcomes.
And analogous to how most people who know the meaning of ‘indie’ tend to associate it only with independent artists and not independence (autonomy) in general, those who even know what ‘groove’ means tend to associate it with music or dancing and not the more general meaning of “being in the groove”. So if we have to choose between the knee-jerk associations of clicking the mouse (or the camera shutter) to a music-only association, the former is more apt.
So I would opt for either
weklikorwe-klikfrom your domain suggestions as they imply collaboration and the social network aspects of the project - my wife also shared this response.
We would be forced to use we-klik.com at the inception because surely the klik.com domain will be incredibly expensive to purchase. Otherwise we’d have to go for klliikk.com which is difficult for world-of-mouth viral spread (but like it as being more unique than we-klik as an obvious copycat of Wechat’s fame). Note I also registered klliik.com and kklliikk.com.
But in the future it would be better to simplify that to just Klik. In fact, even if we use the domain name we-klik or weklik, I think I would still name the site Klik. Because again “to click” also means “we clicked”, per the alternative definitions of ‘click’ I cited for you. The near-term use of a we-klik.com domain could help those users who forgot those definitions of ‘click’, but for a brandable name Klik is much superior to (and orders-of-magnitude more expensive than) Weklik.
For me , after shaking everything down, I would go with (today at least) Klik as a single name for mass-appeal, or Etonomy as the: “brandable name with justifiable meaning that describes the blockchain in a non-technical manner and ties it in with the proposed E cryptocurrency token name.”
Why “or”? Did you mean “and”?
The blockchain ecosystem can benefit from a separate name from the mass market dApp that we spearhead adoption of the blockchain ecosystem with. For example, have two different websites running on the Steem blockchain: steemit.com and busy.org.
Third-party developers will want to refer to the blockchain without advertising the name of a competing dApp. So a separate name Etonomy for the blockchain ecosystem is really required anyway.
And the best other name we had for the blockchain ecosystem was dMesh, but then what is the token name?
@johnnyflynn wrote:
Weighing in on Klik vs Etonomy; the former seems disposable and fad-like, while the latter suggests big picture longevity/respectable (IMO)
Well a popular fad is what we need to scale up adoption. And the blockchain ecosystem should be orthogonal and have longevity.
A popular fad with global adoption can sustain for up to a decade, e.g. Facebook.
Another factor in the decision process is whether we want the currency token name to be E or klik?
The currency token shouldn’t be a fad nor gimmicky. I favor E. Thus I am favoring a popular set of dApps for driving mass adoption named Klik with a subtitle “powered by Etonomy” or “an Etonomy-based dApp”.
EDIT: In the post where I listed all the name ideas, I added two new ideas Dbog and Droot:
Some apt definitions of ‘root’:
- the basic cause, source, or origin of something.
- establish deeply and firmly.
So those definitions correspond with decentralization removing the centralized middle men between us and the source— the End-to-end principle. And the indelible nature of the blockchain.
I realize that even fewer people will assign any meaning to Droot than to Etonomy. People just don’t think deeply about names. I like that Droot is unique, concise, one syllable and many Americans (or anyone else who has seen the movie) may think of the very cute Groot which I had mentioned earlier in this blog when discussing the name Grok. My teenage daughter said should thought of ‘drought’ but I don’t get that because of the different phonetics of the vowels (e.g. ‘flute’ versus ‘flout’)
