"Evolve This Os" Renaming back in early 2025

[Btrfs-zz]

I wanted to share some feedback about the new name AerynOS, specifically from the perspective of a non-native English speaker.

Today I spent some time again with this technically exciting distro, which used to be called Serpent OS. With the announcement of the name change in February 2025, it was now - metaphorically speaking - not St. Patrick but Aeryn who drove the Snake(s) out of Ireland. The Irish roots that the project now draws upon were beautifully reflected in the naming of .stone, .moss, and others.

Having read the post from February 2025, Evolve This OS, I understand the rationale behind the name, and I think the connection to “Aeryn” and the project’s Irish roots is a nice idea in theory, although the narrative felt somewhat forced to me. I also think there is an unfortunate pronunciation and association issue that may not be immediately apparent to native English speakers.

For someone who grew up in a Germanic-speaking environment such as Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, or Germany, and who primarily encounters the name in writing rather than hearing it spoken, "Aeryn" can very easily be read as or associated with "Aryan". The distinction between the intended pronunciation of Erin and the pronunciation of Aryan may be quite subtle if English is not your native language.

For me personally, this creates an uncomfortable association with the word Aryan and the historical and ideological meaning attached to it, particularly in a Central/Western European context. I know that this is not what the project intends, when I see the name written down, before I know how it is supposed to be pronounced. Just from the original rebrand-post I know it is supposed to be pronounced like "Erin".

I suspect this could be more noticeable for people who are not native English speakers, because we often rely more heavily on the written form of an unfamiliar word and may not have the same intuitive sense of how an unusual English spelling such as “Aeryn” is supposed to sound.

The explicit clarification that it is pronounced like “Erin” certainly helps once you know it, but it doesn't completely solve the first-impression problem. Someone discovering the project through a text based medium, like a website recommendation will encounter "AerynOS" visually first.

I wanted to mention this because the stated goal of the rename is to move away from the somewhat negative or intimidating associations of Serpent OS (while dismissing all its positive representations across different traditions like knowledge, transformation, rebirth, healing, fertility, guardianship, wisdom, danger instead of just deception, evil [from wikipedia]) and toward a name that feels more welcoming. From my perspective, Aeryn unfortunately introduces a different, quite personal and culturally uncomfortable association.

I just think it's worth considering how the name may be perceived outside of native English-speaking environments, particularly in parts of Europe where the word “Aryan” carries a very specific and uncomfortable historical association. This is only one person's perspective, of course.

Thank you for reading :)

[ermo]

Thank you for that perspective. It's certainly worth looking into for us. It is perhaps also worth noting that I live in a country that was occupied by the Werhmacht during WWII, and I'm not a fan of the whole concept behind what the Wehrmacht was and did in that period to put it politely.

I know that this is what the project intends

Did you mean to write "I know that this is not what the project intends"?

[Btrfs-zz]

Thank you for reading and understanding my post, also from a personal and society sensible matter as it resonants in you too. I appreciate that and your position with this linked background shared.

The missing "not" It was a typo that I corrected right away after you kindly pointed it out to me.

[Btrfs-zz]

To add to this, a review from 17.02.2026 on Distrowatch also mentioned:
"I remember that the project was once called SerpentOS, and it really sounded modern and strict but concise, I honestly don't understand why they rebranded, especially with such a frivolous name."

[khaga87]

Hey @Btrfs-zz,

Welcome to the community, I appreciate you taking the time to engage with us around the name in a thoughtful manner! Whilst I hear what you're saying, I think for now the project won't be making any changes to the name. I would however like to expand my answer past that though:

1. When the name change first happened, we had a lot of people voice similar concerns around the name. My view has always been that a name will take on the meaning we give to it by what we stand for. We are a 18 months down the line and I barely (if ever) see anyone making the Aryan connection as the name is now taking on the meaning of "exciting development work in the Linux space" instead.
2. As someone of Indian heritage, the word Aryan (and the Swastika) have much older and deeper meaning that the last century.
3. With the point above, there are many words that have different meaning between different languages, I think it would be impossible to come up with a name that doesn't have some negative connotations in all the other languages out there. It's important to me that the name Aeryn (pronounced Erin) comes from good intentions and has, in of itself a beautiful meaning.
4. As a project, we renamed 18 months ago. If we were to rename again, especially before we got to beta, it would also call to question the seriousness of this project if our focus is on our name and not the core tooling and distro we are looking to deliver.

[Btrfs-zz]

First of all thank you for participating @NomadicCore in the topic with new views on it.

I try to focus on a single point in this reply, while I wrote a more general one trying to look at the whole post;

As you wrote "When the name change first happened, we had a lot of people voice similar concerns around the name.", even if one assumes that "a lot! was actually a relatively small number of people (n=x) that doesn't really make the observation less significant. Quite the opposite.

If the pool of people, my assumption just the actual development members (n=<10) actively involved or paying attention at the time was only n people, and a substantial portion of those people independently raised essentially the same concern about the name, then that was already a clear signal available to the people making the decision.

In that hypothetical situation, dismissing the concern at the point when the name was being chosen would seem like the more obvious mistake than pointing to the lack of complaints afterwards.
Because afterwards there was no longer necessarily a meaningful choice.

If the name had already been decided internally, people could reasonably conclude: the team has made its decision; there is nothing I can change here. They might accept it pragmatically without agreeing that the concern was invalid.
That's why I find the progression from "we had a lot of people voice similar concerns" to "I barely (if ever) see anyone making the Aryan connection"
particularly problematic as an argument. That's a contradiction even.

The second observation may simply be an effect of the first decision having already been made. It doesn't demonstrate that the association disappeared. It could just demonstrate that people stopped raising an issue after discovering that the decision was settled.

And if AerynOS is now reaching a much wider international audience, that original feedback (and me taking it up again as it is now gone) becomes more relevant, not less. A decision that may have seemed relatively contained within a small community, can have consequences once the project becomes something, with its userbase growing, to encounter and potentially identify with.

I don't want to argue that "many people complained originally, therefore the name must be changed." as that's too strong. I'd argue something hopefully more modest:

If a significant proportion of the people who were actually present when the name was chosen independently raised the same concern, that was valuable feedback about a foreseeable consequence of the decision. It shouldn't later be treated as though the association is merely dismissed because people/I do actually mention it now.
And if the concern was knowingly accepted in favour of the team's preferred name, that's a perfectly understandable decision to make from one perspective - but it is different from being dismissed/not having existed or not having been legitimate and still is.

[ermo]

The long and the short of it is that the name was decided by the BDFL with only a short period of time between the internal reveal and the public announcement. At the time, I cannot recall anybody clocking that the rename might present an issue.

You have made your point. Now it's time to take stock of the reaction of others (if any).

[Btrfs-zz]

Thank you for taking the time to explain your intentions and position @NomadicCore . I understand and I respect that the naming (and branding) is ultimately the project's developers decision. I also don't question that the name was chosen with good intentions, nor that AerynOS wants to develop its own identity.

That said, I do want to voice the concern more strongly, because I think some of the reasoning in your numbered points unintentionally plays down what is actually being raised here.

1. "A name will take on the meaning we give to it."
   I understand the practical argument, and I can see why, after 18 months, the project would naturally want "Aeryn" (as the words spelling is different to its pronounciation for non-english mother tongue speakers) to mean AerynOS rather than anything else.

But I don't think meaning is something a project can simply assign to a name. Meaning is also something that people bring with them when they encounter it. The fact that the AerynOS community increasingly associates the name with Linux development doesn't make the other association cease to exist for people encountering the project from outside that community.

This is a repitition from my reply above rephrased, there is also an important contradiction here with point 3. In point 1, you argue that a name can acquire a new meaning through the way a community uses it. In point 3, however, negative associations across languages are presented as essentially unavoidable and therefore not something that should weigh heavily. If meanings can genuinely change through sustained use, then existing historical associations can also remain significant for some people while a new project-specific meaning develops.

And I would be cautious about “I barely (if ever) see anyone making the Aryan connection” as evidence that the problem is insignificant. Replies to the topic won't happen as the board is hardly frequented by a larger number. And this is ok too.

Thanks @ermo who already adressed this I also can't remember the renaming and selection of the new name being an open choice for users to participate in. My recollection is that it was an internal, top-down decision. If I'm remembering that incorrectly and there actually was an open debate in which users could participate in choosing the name, please correct me — I may simply have missed it at the time.

Name versus brand; I think there is another distinction here that may explain why we're maybe approaching this from different perspectives, AerynOS as Distro brand: a name and a brand aren't quite the same thing.

A name can simply identify a thing. But a successful distro can gradually become a brand - something that carries an identity, culture, reputation and sense of belonging around it.

Arch Linux is a good example. For many users, "Arch" isn't merely a technical label for a collection of software. It has become something people identify with. The same can happen with AerynOS. That's actually an argument for caring about the name rather than against it. I have hard times to identify with the name (as and why stated in OP) and that's on me only.

And if AerynOS eventually becomes something people identify with, then the meaning and associations of its name become more relevant, not less.

2. The Indian history of Aryan and the Swastika
   I actually think this point makes the issue more complicated rather than less complicated.
   You're absolutely right that "Aryan" has a history much older than Nazism, and that the Nazi racial interpretation was not the original meaning. The Sanskrit-derived concept and the ancient cultural history behind it should not simply be collapsed into Nazi ideology. The swastika likewise has thousands of years of religious and cultural significance in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, long predating Hitler.

But that is precisely why this isn't a simple case of "one culture has a positive meaning and another culture has a negative meaning." There are different historical experiences attached to these things.

For someone from India or another culture where these symbols and concepts have living cultural or religious meaning, that history can be immediate and personal. For someone from Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, or elsewhere in Europe, the Nazi appropriation of "Aryan" and the swastika carries a completely different historical weight. I repeat myself, sorry.
And because AerynOS is an international project, both perspectives inevitably exist around it.

5. I realize I'm speaking from one part of the community's perspective here, and I don't want to pretend to represent everyone.
   But I think that's also a useful metaphor for open-source projects generally: a distro isn't made into a whole thing by one person or one idea. Many small parts — developers, users, maintainers, artwork, documentation, tooling, opinions, experiences and community - collectively make the whole.

A concern coming from one part doesn't necessarily have to represent the whole community to be worth hearing (generalization by me as my opinion is respected here by repliying to it respectfully and not just taking the post down). So I don't want to inflate this issue beyond what it is. Depending on someone's mindset, background and historical awareness, the name may be completely unremarkable. For many current users it probably is.

But I also don't want the opposite mistake: treating the fact that most users aren't troubled by it as proof that the concern itself is insignificant.
I understand that the name change is not going to happen. I don't question the team's intentions, and I am not accusing anyone involved with AerynOS of supporting anything negative connotation brings up, or anything remotely like that.

To close this; The name may have acquired a new meaning inside the AerynOS community, but that doesn't erase the meanings and histories people bring with them when they encounter the brand from outside it.

I can accept that AerynOS being what it is and staying while still believing my original concern is legitimate.

Thanks to everybody involved in the development and to "Evolve" due to your hard work for the user and community!

[armerpunkt]

Perhaps the website should have a note right on the front page that it is pronounced like Éireann or Erin?

[ermo]

Great idea!

[Nomen-Luni]

I'm of the opinion that if you play the 'sounds like' game across all common languages you'll be bounced from pillar to post and never be able to please everyone. There also unfortunately exists a class of moral narcissists who will take the opportunity to power trip with ever increasing demands once it becomes apparent you will pander to them.

Let me be clear, I'm not placing anyone here in that category, rather generalising about what can happen.

If someone would, for example, boycott the distro based on 'sounds like' after a reasonable explanation, I would question if they're someone we want on board. I say 'we' but to be clear I'm not part of the aeryn team and do not speak in any capacity on their behalf. This is my opinion and my opinion alone.

I think armerpunkts idea is a good one and an explanation of the meaning could also be added. This gives something to point people to.

[Btrfs-zz]

I agree with the substance of what you wrote, though I'd frame it a little differently. I think there's a thin line between sharing a different perspective and reading too much into the motives behind it.

I think we ultimately agree on the practical conclusion: the name isn't changing, and clarifying its pronunciation and meaning is a reasonable approach. My point was simply that the association I raised is real and worth acknowledging, even if others don't share it. Disagreement doesn't need to become a judgment about the people expressing it.

I also think armerpunkt's suggestion is a good, practical addition. Making the pronunciation and meaning explicit addresses the ambiguity directly and gives the different perspectives a place alongside each other.

[Nomen-Luni]

Disagreement doesn't need to become a judgement about the people expressing it.

Motive is important in predicting potential behaviour, in this case how the situation can escalate. I reserve the right to exercise judgement based on past experience and express it where I think it's not only relevant but important to the conversation.

Fortunately it sounds as if we've reached a mutually agreeable solution courtesy of armerpunkt.