Look at these horrible names for tech stuff.

1) Rust. Imagine going to a top manager and saying you want to program a product in Rust [rust-lang.org]. Rust makes iron into useless red dust.

RUST - Ridiculously Unable Social Tribe?
RUST - Raunchily Unstable and Seriously Troubled?
RUST - Rash Under Smelly Toes (Someone else's idea.)

2) Gimp is a derogatory term for someone that is disabled or has a medical problem that results in physical impairment.

3) GNU is a recursive acronym for "GNU's Not Unix!" GNU humor.

4) LaTeX is written in both English and Greek letters. (Why not Chinese, Japanese, and Thai characters also? Ha!) LaTeX requires two paragraphs in the Wikipedia article to explain the name.

5) There is nothing "regular" about Regular Expressions.

6) NetLoony Apache Server GUI and Tools. (Looney is someone who is "Extremely foolish or silly".)

7) pGina.

8) Bouncy Castle cryptography.

9) An acquaintance of mine worked at The Last Pickle. Yes, really. Apache Cassandra support.

10) Slashdot comment: "If you make a ForNix product, please start at version 8!" The commenter wants it to sound like "fornicate".

11) Slashdot story: Pronounced "conch," but spelled Xonsh, it runs on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X systems, bringing Python libraries to the command line -- for example, the ability to use regular expressions when globbing files.

12) Boom Supersonic. "Boom" is what you hear when there is an explosion. It's not just a word indicating going supersonic.

Doesn't anyone at BOOM have a mother?
Son: Mom, what do you think of the name BOOM for my company?
Mom: No, son, that's not a good name.
Son: Why not?
Mom: You're only 3 years old. You'll understand when you are 4.

13) Malwarebytes is software named after the problem it is supposed to cure. (Should a company that makes toilet paper be called "feces"?)

14) CockroachDB (Couldn't they have found a better name? Maybe PukeDB? FatalCancerDB? PottyTrainingDB?)

15) Lisp (programming language) is a speech impediment [wikipedia.org].

16) PostgreSQL. Someone at the recent OSCON told me that people often call it "PostGres". I'm very impressed with the software and the organization, but the name needs improvement.

17) "C" is a letter, not a name for a computer language.

18) C++ is a name spelled with math symbols.

19) "D" is a letter, not a name for a computer language.

20) Microsoft is small and soft.

21) Alphabet is the parent company of Google. Not a good name. Other, similar bad choices for a company name: "Name", "Spelling", and "Country". I found that am able to invent worse names for a company: "FussBudget" and "Ookly-Wookly.