Just wondering how much a name of a product make sense? This strike me when I was reading about Search Engine Optimization and came across how domain name plays a vital role in optimization (will cover SEO in my next posts). Lets have a look at few products from each space and try to understand what they really mean.
Lets start with Portals space:
ATG:
Art Technology Group – A group who created art for Internet world by providing common face to all the applications within the organization/
BroadVision:
Broad-vision = enterprise wide vision? Nicely framed but their vision is really going hey-ward 
Vignette:
A decorative design or small illustration used on the title page of a book or at the beginning or end of a chapter. A decorative design for your information capturing from beginning to end, from all systems across the organization.
JBoss Portal:
Java Boss?
Liferay Portal:
Life – ray : a ray of life for all the vendors who can not afford commercial portal products.
Plone:
Anyone out there help me. I have no clue about it
ECM/DM/WCM Space:
Documentum:
Document -um means documents – used as an expression of doubt, hesitation, deliberation, interest, etc. Confused about managing your documents? Here we are at your service 
Very Nice !
FileNet:
Files over Net? Well makes sense based on the offerings that they have. Good job !!!
Alfresco:
Out-of-doors; in the open air. It does express its open source nature but no hint about ECM? What if tomorrow its acquired by some big ECM giant?
HummingBird:
Any bird of the family Trochilid, which include around four hundred species. Well a good way to express that it can handle any content type.
Interwoven:
To weave together, as threads, strands, branches, or roots. Nice way to express the product
Fatwire:
Thick wire? A thick wire that is bringing all the content contributors together under one system
Looking forward for comments about the existing products and for including new products in the list
2 comments
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Thomas says:
April 23, 2007 at 11:09 am (UTC -5)
JBoss Portal, is just composed of the name of the Red Hat division + the name of the product (Portal, the open source portal solution from JBoss).
JBoss name is a whole story by itself, first named EJBoss. Trademark issues with Sun lead to drop the first letter.
Sarah Elkins says:
May 2, 2007 at 7:15 pm (UTC -5)
Plone is an imaginary onomatopoeia for a cartoon ricochet.
How do I know this? Wikipedia says Plone was named after the British band. The band site bio talks about the cartoon ricochet.
Also, Plone has been the CMS for Penguicon (open source science fiction con) in recent years.