mxcl.dev

Naming by Max Howell

The right namedoes the work.

I name products, companies, apps, protocols, and difficult new things. One flat fee.

Name this thing Why Homebrew worked
Books orbiting the black hole from Supermassive Book Hole

Why Homebrew worked

The name was part of the interface.

I named Homebrew before I wrote its code. I wanted the name to lead naturally to the rest of the product and make an obscure system easier to understand.

It started with the language.

A co-worker at Last.fm suggested beer. I chose Homebrew because people would create and customize their own packages. Formula beat recipe because it was more distinctive. Most of the language followed within a week.

The first public README already had Homebrew, a Brewery, a Cellar, formulae, kegs, and the brew command. Later I added brew doctor and taps.

“I wanted a theme that allowed people to see analogies and metaphors in all of the system and code.”

Homebrew Turns 15, 2024
Read the first commit Hear the naming story

I’ll start with a rare Belgian yeast and Sussex hops

/Brewery/
Cellar/wget/1.14/
bin/wget

Homebrew
the system
brew
the command
formula
a package definition
keg
an installed version
Cellar
where the kegs live
tap
another source

Four names. Four different jobs.

A name can explain the product, establish its character, make a category feel familiar, or create a language the company can keep using.

Automic Vault editorial artwork

One letter, three readings

Automic Vault

I started with Atomic Vault: a safe place against the worst possible attack. One changed letter made it ownable. Automic can read as a novel abbreviation of automations or automatons while keeping the atomic threat imagery. Its vocabulary now includes isotopes, gates, hardening, and blessed scripts.

See the product
Books spiralling into the Supermassive Book Hole

The pun became the product

Supermassive Book Hole

It came to me in the shower as a pun on Supermassive Black Hole. Then the product metaphor appeared: sucking books into one place where you can find loadsa info on them. The name explains the product and supplies its image in four words.

Familiar on purpose

PromiseKit

Bland by design. Promise says exactly what the framework implements. Kit copies Apple’s naming pattern so it already feels like a fundamental part of the ecosystem.

See PromiseKit
Package Manager Manager macOS app

Literal until it becomes funny

Package Manager Manager

It manages package managers. The repetition is both the explanation and the joke. Then pkg⋅mgr² compresses the long name into a compact product mark.

See the product

A long record, not a lucky hit.

Across my public projects, the right answer is sometimes plain, sometimes ridiculous, and sometimes a system that can keep naming itself.

Give it a name people can build on.

Email Max