The name Skype combines the familiar and the peculiar. Though there’s that unmistakable word sky in there, the end of the name is a bit of a mystery. On the Skype forum, an employee reveals that the name was derived from the expression sky peer-to-peer, which was shortened to Skyper and then to Skype. So this is a kind of a blend, but a rather unusual one.

What makes Skype unusual? First, while sky peer-to-peer is an extremely descriptive name for a peer-to-peer telephony service that works worldwide, the -pe portion of Skype is almost impossible to associate with peer-to-peer unless you’re told to. So Skype is really more like a tweak of the word sky. When looked at that way, the name is still unusual because the addition of a single consonant to the end of a word (The Name Inspector is talking about the pronunciation here, not the spelling) is a very uncommon naming strategy. No tweaked word names on the TechCrunch index list or the alternative search engine list are derived that way.

For that reason, some people might interpret Skype as a more conventional blend of sky with something that rhymes with Skype, like hype–or pipe, ripe, type, wipe. etc. Of these, pipe is the most positive association that’s at all relevant. But why the word sky? Well, aside from the general positive associations (sunshine, heaven, height=excellence/goodness, etc.), it seems to be a metonymic reference to communication signals as they exist in the popular imagination–flying around in the air. Since this is internet telephony we’re talking about, however, it seems just as likely that the signals would be flying around in cables of various kinds.

Another notable thing about Skype is its historical origin. Like many common English words that begin with sk- (e.g. skill, skin, skirt), sky has its roots in Old Norse. Maybe that’s one reason the Scandinavian founders chose this word for their company name. This distinctly Germanic provenance actually makes Skype stand out a little in the crowd of tech names, which tend, like scientific terms, to be derived at least partly from Latin or Greek. It gives Skype a basic and old quality, which is enhanced by the fact that the name is a single strong syllable.

The simplicity of the name Skype is its greatest asset. It makes the technology seem like a basic necessity that no one should do without, like a desk, a plate, a sink, or some other everyday item with a one-syllable name. It’s almost as if someone discovered a short and useful but long-forgotten English word and reclaimed it. That’s really quite a naming achievement.

Tags: skype, the name skype, skyper, sky peer-to-peer, sky, telephony, internet telephony, VoIP, etymology, Germanic, Old Norse

TechCrunch is about as hardnosed as a name can be, both in sound and in meaning. Has this helped to establish Michael Arrington as a rainmaker of Web 2.0? Who can say?

What makes this name so badass? First, there’s the no-nonsense word tech, which tells you in no uncertain terms what Mr. Arrington will be writing about. Then there are the meanings of crunch. Perhaps the most relevant is the one found in the expressions crunch numbers and crunch data. In that context crunch means something like ‘submit to rigourous, impersonal analysis’. That certainly helps to establish Arrington’s credibility as a critic of new web technologies. There’s also the expression crunch time, which implies furious hard work to meet an impending deadline, especially in the tech industry. Crunch also implies physical exertion, as in do crunches, and destruction, as in crunch, crush, smash, squash, etc. It’s all very macho. (Of course, crunch also suggests snack foods, but that’s hardly relevant here, is it?)

All this crunchiness is supported by the heavy, hard sound of this name. TechCrunch almost seems like it was invented to illustrate the principles of sound symbolism, so important to names, that are represented by the phonetic transcriptions included in these posts. It’s filled with low-sonority sounds (represented by the dark phonetic symbols) and closed syllables (shown by the way the dark symbols serve as “bookends” for each syllable). Then there’s that transition between syllables. The first syllable ends with a [k] sound and the second begins with a [k] sound. In the most natural pronunciation, the first [k] never gets released, so a person saying the name just goes reticent there for a while between syllables. Very brusque.

The name is even heavy orthographically, because there are lots of consonants, and two of them (the final sound of each syllable) are represented by the two letters “ch”. That makes the ratio of letters to syllables pretty high (5:1, in fact).

The name TechCrunch is big and heavy and not so pretty, but it’s serious and it gets the job done.

Tags: TechCrunch, the name TechCrunch, Michael Arrington, Mike Arrington, Arrington, MichaelArrington, MikeArrington