<story><title>When I first heard the name &quot;Safari&quot;</title><url>http://donmelton.com/2012/12/19/when-i-first-heard-the-name-safari/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>SimHacker</author><text>At Maxis, we didn&apos;t arrive at the totally obvious name The Sims until very late in development.&lt;p&gt;At first there was the secret development name, Project X, but everybody had a Project X, and we certainly couldn&apos;t ship with that.&lt;p&gt;Then there was Jamie&apos;s obvious name, Dollhouse, which was quite descriptive, but boys would hate it.&lt;p&gt;Then there was Will&apos;s quirky name, Super Happy Friends Home, which only the Japanese would love.&lt;p&gt;Then there was Jim&apos;s high minded name, Jefferson, for the pursuit of happiness, but it made everybody think of the sitcom The Jeffersons.&lt;p&gt;Then there was the legendary perfectly descriptive catchy epic name, that everyone on the team really loved, which we dreamed up together in a brainstorming session when we were all quite stoned, but by the next day we all forgot it, and nobody could ever remember what it was again, although we could all distinctly remember the warm glow of knowing that it was the best possible name in the world, which everyone would love. Those were good times! ;)&lt;p&gt;But for some reason, during all that time, despite racking our brains, nobody ever though of &quot;The Sims&quot;, which is retrospect was a totally obvious name for a continuation of the SimCity franchise focusing on the people in the city. (The original SimCity manual referred to the people in the city as &quot;the Sims,&quot; so there was a long standing precedent.)&lt;p&gt;I have no idea who eventually came up with the name The Sims, and I&apos;m happy with it, but it definitely wasn&apos;t the perfect name that everybody forgot. It&apos;s lost in the sands of time...</text></comment>
<story><title>When I first heard the name &quot;Safari&quot;</title><url>http://donmelton.com/2012/12/19/when-i-first-heard-the-name-safari/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>augustl</author><text>I think many of you in the Hacker News crowd will recognize this problem that I&apos;m yet to find a solution to myself:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    mkdir [blinking cursor]
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Then 30 minutes passes and you didn&apos;t end up making that thing anyway since you got distracted while thinking up a name for it.</text></comment>