judge a book by its cover
What the heck are you talking about? I love the name "Arduino." The first time I heard it (not too long ago) I looked it up. Really. On the Internet. You can do that. (No, I didn't have any problem spelling it and Google didn't have any trouble finding it.)
Those baby-name sites all have definitions like "good friend", "staunch friend", "brave friend". Has anyone ever called an 8088 or a Pentium or "Windows Vista" or anything else from Intel or Microsoft any kind of friend? (Well, maybe their shareholders...)
When I looked a little more I found stuff like the following on http://www.digicult.it/digimag/article.asp?id=1276:
"Arduino from Dadone or Arduino from Pombia, known as Arduino from Ivrea, was the King of Italy from 1002 to 1014. The Romantic culture made his figure popular, because they saw in him a precocious representative of the struggle for Italy to get out from under foreign domination."
Man! That's some heady stuff! I mean, damn, I get goose bumps from that (even if it did turn out that our Arduino name was taken from that of the snack bar at the Design Institute in Milan).
As far as the name "Duemilanove" is concerned, I just love it. Sounds a little exotic to this good ol' boy from Arkansas, but it actually means something: 2009. Imagine that! What the heck does Celeron mean? (That crunchy green stalk that you put peanut butter on.) Pentium? (Maybe it means something to someone, but it's Greek to me, and I can't think of any etymological connection to the actual product.)
On the other hand, maybe I'm not in the ideal marketing target demographic group for any computery stuff. (Really old guy with Welsh/Pennsylvania Dutch forbears, born and half-bred in the Southern U.S.)
Anyhow, don't people sometimes like to stretch their intellects and try the sounds of new things? Maybe even look them up? Maybe even learn a little? See Footnote.
Easy to remember? I can't say. Likable? What's not to like? And, I think that Arduino has expanded beyond some kind of "cult" status that is only appreciated by a few technogeeks. What's the post count on this forum? How many registered members?
Regards,
Dave
Footnote:
TheLaw, you said something about
really smart people that are really really ignorant.
Well...
"Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education."
---Bertrand Russell
Marketing?
In Silicon Valley, there's an old joke that goes like this:
Q:
What's the difference between a Marketing VP and God?
A:
God doesn't think he's the VP of Marketing.
---davekw7x (With apologies to Larry Ellison)