Name change discussion

[hyprlab]

@Toxblh @typedev @alfonsolzrg @7system7 @thecalamityjoe87 @frenchy82 @yioannides @chrispouliot @iliasen @somepaulo

There is another project making an email app for macOS using the name Vireo. The maintainer contacted me here in issue #208. Here is their Gitlab and website

While a complete coincidence, it would appear they chose the name about a month before I did. So in fairness, I think it would be prudent for us to devise another name. Ultimately I will be the final say on the name choice but I really want to get all our contributors involved so we pick a name that works.

Here are the candidates I came up with this morning. They start in order of preference for me. English words are too overused in the email app space so I'm exploring Nordic/Icelandic/Gaelic words for mail, post, envelope, letter, etc as I want to keep our icon largely in-tact (sans the bird sadly)

• Hylki - HIL-kee - Icelandic - a case, a capsule, the shell that holds and protects what's inside
• Holf - A compartment. Pósthólf is the Icelandic for mailbox or PO box
• Kavet - KA-vet - Coined off kuvert, envelope across the Nordic languages.
• Litir - Irish/Scottish Gaelic - "letter"
• Letur - LEH-tur - Icelandic - lettering, type
• Sendill - SEN-dill - Icelandic - A courier, a messenger

I really like Hylki and Holf, probably Hylki the best of the two. It's unique and not used in software at all. Holf is very strong sounding and I love the 4 letters.

[7system7]

I hardly believe, they initialized their repo earlier, than you renamed the app. I hope, they prove their truth for you. 🙂 But it is just my opinion, and I am often a bit cynical. I look up to people like you, who can approach things so positively.

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To tell something positive too: I think, Sendill or Holf - I like them in this order - could be a good choice! I considered the pronunciation only, so these words are good to say and can be memorized well.

on top of this, Sendill contains the SEND English word. 🤣

[hyprlab]

Thank you for that compliment! I really don't want to change the name but I also don't want branding confusion either. Holf is super easy to pronounce and remember, you're right.

[yioannides]

Ah that's unfortunate, but it happens.

Anyway, +1 for Hylki! It just looks and sounds the best, out of all these (changing the branding to a lowercase calligraphic h would be cool too)

[yioannides]

Yeah exactly! The other names are okay as well, but maybe sound a bit too fantastical / LotR-like, whereas Hylki sounds like a cool productivity app!

I really like Vireo too and the coincidence is very strange indeed (identical Claude prompts / ideation?), but alas I suppose it is what it is... though I'm not sure how much of a tangible overlap a macOS-only and a Linux-only mail client will have.

[7system7]

For macOS, a lot of apps is closed source and have subscription plan. I presume, name matching hinders the potential profitability of a future business deal if the users cannot find the "proper" app for first time. 🙂

On top of this, GTK can be compiled for MacOS too. In the future and if @hyprlab decides, Holf (! 😆) can be developed for mac too.

[p-mitana]

IMO I'm not sure how to pronounce Hylki. I'd probably go with how I'd pronounce this spelling in my mother tongue, but still it's a bit quirky.

[yioannides]

All pronunciations are written above, but every non-native-English speaker (including myself) will eventually pronounce it as they see fit, that's pretty obvious. The point is that the set of characters look good, are very brandable and sounds like an actual app.

The rest sound too epic fiction-ish to me, but I'm not going to dissuade @hyprlab from any other choice.

[hyprlab]

@yioannides thats an excellent point about the set of characters being brandable. Yeah I'm def leaning heavily towards the Hylki name

[p-mitana]

I like Litir the most. It sounds a bit like "mithril", but why not?

And some runes could replace the bird on the icon. :)

[hyprlab]

lol! I like that Litir means "letter" so it's a good metaphor BUT I also see "litter" and "litre", litter in particular reminds me of cat litter which isn't the best association.

[hyprlab]

I am open to other possibilities and would love to hear everyone's ideas on a name, not just what I already posted.

[p-mitana]

Maybe some other yellow bird, so that the icon change would be minor or could stay?

[hyprlab]

Sure! I do love our icon

[somepaulo]

A few more suggestions:

• Flaveo — FLAH-vee-oh or FLAY-vee-oh. Latin for “to be yellow or golden”.
• Citril — SIT-ril. A real yellow-and-green European finch.
• Serin — SEH-rin. A small yellow songbird related to the canary.
• Tarin — TA-rin. The French name for a siskin, a small yellow-green finch.

[somepaulo]

Here's a European Serin for good measure:

[p-mitana]

The European one is definitely nicer. And I guess similar enough to a vireo that probably hardly anyone finds out that the icon wasn't designed with a citril in mind :)

[hyprlab]

Yeah honestly the icon's bird design as it stands now is not really based on the shape of the vireo in particular so it can work for any of these birds

[chrispouliot]

Citril honestly sounds really cool

[hyprlab]

Yeah Citril is a solid possibility! The only downside would be it's closeness to Citrix by 1 character, a major software vendor

[typedev]

Hi Jason! It’s a shame about the situation, but unfortunately, this happens quite often lately. From your list, I like Hylki Holf Sendill—they sound really good. Personally, I like the bird-name concept; it might be worth exploring that direction further. Plus, it would save that cool bird icon. So, I’d suggest a few options related to birds and bird mythology. I did look for options involving "Claude," but I curated and directed the selection myself; here are a few ideas:

How a raven from Game of Thrones might be named:
Corax — Latin/Greek, species name (Corvus corax — specifically the raven, not the crow)
Cuervo — Spanish
Corb — Catalan, Romanian

A few birds with evocative names:
Kría — Arctic tern, the record-holder for migration distance (pole to pole). A great metaphor for delivery.
Sterna — Tern;

Myths:
Flóki — Hrafna-Flóki (Flóki Vilgerðarson) took three ravens on his ship and released them to find Iceland.
Finist — The "Bright Falcon" (from Slavic folklore), who arrives when summoned.

I don’t want to overwhelm you with the agony of choice—these are just ideas, and I really like the direction you’re taking :)

[hyprlab]

Oh these are excellent! Floki is really speaking to me. Cursory web search turned up some crypto coin using that name and an app on the iOS app store, neither are associated with email so it's a possibility! I love the Norse mythology connection there.

[chrispouliot]

I think I like Sendill the best (has send in it). It does seem to have an email company already attached to it though? Just from looking it up

[hyprlab]

Yeah Sendill is out, you're right about it being used for another email service

[frenchy82]

Hylki is nice.

Why not bluebird
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluebird

[yioannides]

Thunderbird's mascot is blue, so that would be a terrible idea:

[hyprlab]

Yes I agree, no blue birds. I'm leaning more in the direction of abandoning the bird motif altogether. Hylki is probably the direction we will go since its very unique and doesn't collide with any existing brands, and it also has a solid mail metaphor.

[yioannides]

Yeah I don't have a strong bias for using bird metaphors either and Hylki is very strong as a name.

[7system7]

... and there is the BlueMail. https://bluemail.me

[hyprlab]

I've made my decision: we are going to migrate the app name to Hylki. Im working on the migration process now. I want this to be was simple as possible for everyone but first I need to test it on my dev machine to see the whole flow. I never want to go through another rename again lol hopefully this is the last!

[hyprlab]

loll yeah I do not envy that ! I am very humbled by everyone's willingness to translate, it's a huge deal!

[somepaulo]

ChatGPT 5.6 Sol is quite good for an initial run. Point it (or any other of your choice) directly at the upstream .pot (https://github.com/hyprlab/vireo/blob/main/po/vireo.pot) and at the existing Thunderbird translations (https://pontoon.mozilla.org/el/thunderbird/) for reference and common terms. Ask it to give you a translated Greek .po, then open it in Translation Editor or poedit and read through every string.

[yioannides]

@somepaulo Thank you for the info. I don't have a subscription with chatGPT or any other LLM so I doubt it'll give me a full translation for the entire .pot without an account.

GNOME projects hosted on Weblate sometimes have pre-translated entries for unverified .po files which makes it easier to go through, but Greek is a highly idiomatic language so I usually need to correct every single string. Better than nothing though.

[somepaulo]

I don't have a subscription

No worries. Here's what mine generated to give you a kick-start:
el.po.txt
(had to add .txt for GitHub to allow me to upload it)

GPT says it uses the same Greek terms as Thunderbird and Gnome for common things like folder and message, etc. I can read Greek, but I don't know the meanings of 99.9% of the words. The ones I know from the Greek guys I used to work with aren't usable in any piece of software )) So I'm useless in checking it. Hope it helps you get Hylki speaking Greek sooner.

[yioannides]

Thank you so much, you're so kind! I'll get started on it right away, especially now that we have a new app name. It's also beneficial to reference GNOME's i18n portals for GNOME-like translations, but since GNOME doesn't have an official mail client, the Thunderbird translations are the next best thing.

Ευχαριστώ πολύ and muito obrigado!

EDIT: the translations are excellent, what the hell... 😳