If You Hate the Name Techland, You Should See…

If you don’t like the name Techland for the just-launched technology site from TIME.com, you should see some of the alternatives.

In fact, thanks to a post by Techland’s Lev Grossman, you can see some of the alternatives.

Grossman wrote:

So we heard a little grumbling after we unveiled the new name for this site. You know, the name that wasn’t Nerd World. Some of that grumbling may even have been coming out of my mouth.

But naming a Website is harder than it looks. We couldn’t get Nerd World. And when you’re attached by a hideous Giger-like umbilical cord to a multinational mega-corporation, people like to sue you, so you can’t get afford to get within a parsec of some chickenass trademark fight. And people assume you have infinitely deep pockets. Seriously, we had to bid on domain names through a proxy, so no one would know it was us who were sniffing around. One of the things that made Techland so damnably attractive is that Time Inc. already owned it.

Some of the rejected names for Techland, as described by Grossman:

1. BLASTOPH Personally I have no explanation for this idea. They liked it, I hated it.

2. TERABOSS Believe it or not, a strong contender. I take full credit.

3. BYTE CYCLE Yeah, that was mine too. Sort of like lightcycle. You know, like in Tron? But like with bytes? I hated this one 10 seconds after I thought of it.

4. NERDFORUM Dear Nerdforum: I never thought things like this happened in real life…

5. ECHOLATOR I challenge you to tell me what this means. I challenge all of you!

6. EMUL8TOR

7. DEE20 Awesome, right? Josh didn’t get it.

8. NERDACITY This one polled well. But everybody pronounced it “Nerd-a-city.” As in, let’s go nerd a city. Not as in, the nerdacity of hope.

9. REPLIC8TOR

10. NERD CHRONICLE…of Higher Education? of Prydain?

11. GENIUS CLUB You know what? I still like this one.

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