What should we name this project?

[bartkl]

Any name change is easy now that the project is still in its infancy.

Considerations

• Descriptive names are doomed to fail and cause confusion and discussion.
  • People have different ideas of what notions like "schema", "generate" and "transform" mean.
  • This approach to "describe what it does" is something Wittgenstein has one or two things to say about ;).
  • They're boring!
  • I can't think of any successful library/application that has a name as descriptive as "Schema Transformer".

Failing candidates

Two names we've used or use that tried to be descriptive, and fall short:

• Schema Generator: for some the notion of "generation" suggests that you're creating "more from less", like in the generation of a sequence from a single seed value. This does not apply to our project. In fact, saying that we create "less from more" is closer to the truth.
• Schema Transformer: some think "transforming" suggests that no information loss occurs from source to target. This, too, isn't accurate with regards to this project: the output schemas often have less expressive power than the input semantic model.

And again: all of the points above!

The way forward

• it seems to be a better idea to come up with a name that does not aim to be (too) descriptive, although some playful reference to what it is/does might be nice.
• We could consider integrating the Mimir name here as well, although I think the challenge remains exactly the same.
  • A more important question (outside of the scope of this discussion) would be: will this project be a part of Mimir? Or something independent that happens to be a dependency of the Mimir project?

Suggestions are welcome, and perhaps at some point (if it appears necessary) we can create a poll to vote between finalists. Hopefully we reach an agreement sooner, though :).

[bartkl]

What about:

metamorph

It's not too literally descriptive to cause confusion and discussion, and it sounds like a cool name. It does, however, still have references to the goal of this application: "meta" refers the semantic modeling, and "morph" on the "change of form" part.

[bartkl]

@BlowMaWhistle suggested:

Mjölnir

After the hammer of the Nordic god Thor. Hammers are tools that transform, and often destroy (in this case information). It may also play nicely with Mimir's Nordic naming.

[bartkl]

The group has decided: Metamorph it is!

Mjölnir is a great name for a potential UI in the future, since that is the actual "tool" people will be working with.