• WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Firefox, the browser, was originally named after a red panda

    Actually, it was originally named Phoenix. Then they changed it to Firebird to avoid infringing on the Phoenix BIOS company’s trademark, then they changed it to Firefox because there was already a database program named Firebird.

    • DigitalPaperTrail@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Ackchyually, Phoenix was named such because it rose from the ashes of Netscape Navigator. and I’m sure some internet historian is able to come along and go further back than that, but going through the entire genealogy of the name firefox wasn’t inside the scope of what I was originally ackchyually’ing.

      I can see how me saying “originally” can be seen as going all the way back, but what was meant by that is the original intent of only the name firefox, specifically - using mozilla’s own words, and if you clicked on my link to the mozilla archive, they bring up it being similar to firebird, too. But again, it was outside what I was commenting on.

      It was just so a meme doesn’t make people go around confusing anyone fluent in chinese that we’re getting it wrong about them, but this is just a trivially small corner of the internet, and it’s going to happen regardless, anyways; it’s too fun of an idea to pass up, like how I see being passed around that the chinese call owls “sky cats” when it ended up being “cat (head/bald) eagle”.