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When I first heard the name "Safari"

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Re: When I first heard the name "Safari"

#161

Post by ufo »

debacle wrote: post #101
augustl wrote: post #5

I think many of you in the Hacker News crowd will recognize this problem that I'm yet to find a solution to myself: mkdir [blinking cursor] Then 30 minutes passes and you didn't end up making that thing anyway since you got distracted while thinking up a name for it.

Good translate is your friend. Pick a language you don't know, and have at it: "picture site" => "irudi_gune" (basque) I find that Basque, Portuguese, and Welsh produce very good names.

As someone from Brazil, I wonder what kind of words would sound weird to an English speaker like that. I would have thought that most words would be recognizeable, given that English also has its fair share of Latin words.

Re: When I first heard the name "Safari"

#162

Post by debacle »

ufo wrote: post #161
debacle wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good translate is your friend. Pick a language you don't know, and have at it: "picture site" => "irudi_gune" (basque) I find that Basque, Portuguese, and Welsh produce very good names.

As someone from Brazil, I wonder what kind of words would sound weird to an English speaker like that. I would have thought that most words would be recognizeable, given that English also has its fair share of Latin words.

Portugese is far enough from Latin that many of the English cognates are not immediately recognizable.

"Sangue bom," for example, is not visually translatable to English.

Re: When I first heard the name "Safari"

#163

Post by rmathew »

HornThisWay wrote: post #106
SimHacker wrote: post #44

At Maxis, we didn't arrive at the totally obvious name The Sims until very late in development. At first there was the secret development name, Project X, but everybody had a Project X, and we certainly couldn't ship with that. Then there was Jamie's obvious name, Dollhouse, which was quite descriptive, but boys would hate it. Then there was Will's quirky name, Super Happy Friends Home, which only the Japanese would…

Were you going to call it "The Buds"? I don't think that's a very good name, but if I was high, I'd probably think it was perfect.

For the benefit of the non-native English speakers here or for those not too familiar with American culture, can you explain the awesomeness of this name?

Re: When I first heard the name "Safari"

#164

Post by marshray »

SimHacker wrote: post #99
acheron wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seem to remember hearing it was going to be called "SimHouse" at one point. "Super Happy Friends Home" is excellent, but yeah, I think "The Sims" worked out for the best. :)

Oh yeah, that sounds familiar! But that DEFINITELY was not the legendary name we all forgot. SimHouse and a few names like that were floated around, but they were't very exciting or apt, since the focus evolved from the architecture to the people. The big problem was that nobody had any idea what players would think of it, so we just kept developing it and playing it and changing the design, while wondering about wha…

SimCity 2000 was one of my favorite games ever. The Sims was novel and fun. But every Sim-themed game my family has bought since has just not held interest for more than a couple hours at best.

Any thoughts on what happened to later Maxis games?

Re: When I first heard the name "Safari"

#165

Post by gwillen »

rmathew wrote: post #163
HornThisWay wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were you going to call it "The Buds"? I don't think that's a very good name, but if I was high, I'd probably think it was perfect.

For the benefit of the non-native English speakers here or for those not too familiar with American culture, can you explain the awesomeness of this name?

"Bud" is an abbreviation of "buddy", an informal term for "friend."

"Bud" is also a slang term for marijuana (which is made from the buds of the cannabis plant.)

Re: When I first heard the name "Safari"

#166

Post by [deleted] »

marshray wrote: post #164
SimHacker wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yeah, that sounds familiar! But that DEFINITELY was not the legendary name we all forgot. SimHouse and a few names like that were floated around, but they were't very exciting or apt, since the focus evolved from the architecture to the people. The big problem was that nobody had any idea what players would think of it, so we just kept developing it and playing it and changing the design, while wondering about wha…

SimCity 2000 was one of my favorite games ever. The Sims was novel and fun. But every Sim-themed game my family has bought since has just not held interest for more than a couple hours at best. Any thoughts on what happened to later Maxis games?

[deleted]

Re: When I first heard the name "Safari"

#167

Post by neumann_alfred »

SimHacker wrote: post #44

At Maxis, we didn't arrive at the totally obvious name The Sims until very late in development. At first there was the secret development name, Project X, but everybody had a Project X, and we certainly couldn't ship with that. Then there was Jamie's obvious name, Dollhouse, which was quite descriptive, but boys would hate it. Then there was Will's quirky name, Super Happy Friends Home, which only the Japanese would…

hen there was Will's quirky name, Super Happy Friends Home, which only the Japanese would love.

?

I just saw a talk by him yesterday where he confirmed what you can read (and see) here, http://www.will-wright.com/willshistory7.php

Not that it has anything to do with your point, but still :P

Re: When I first heard the name "Safari"

#168

Post by xnxn »

chimeracoder wrote: post #130
vetler wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's always Finnish lakes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lakes_in_Finland Might be difficult to pronounce for some, though.

Even better: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lakes_in_Minnesota

I'm torn between Operation "Big Spunk" and "Big Sucker".

Re: When I first heard the name "Safari"

#169

Post by msgilligan »

I remember when Safari was very buggy in its early versions and some folks within Apple had taken to calling it "So Sorry". I had several bug reports on a web app my company had developed for Apple that turned out to be Safari bugs. They were fixed rather rapidly, which is what would finally convince my contacts that it definitely wasn't a bug in our web app. "So Sorry" they said...
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