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from https://mageia.org/pipermail/mageia-discuss/20100920/000315.html by misc (mostly)

===How to pronounce it===
well see [[Blog20100918MageiaLaunched Mageia launched]] and [[Blog20100924MageiaSomeMotto a motto for Mageia]]
Some history about choosing the name Mageia - μαγεία in greek ;-)


===Where does Mageia come from?===

> I must have missed some posting that explains "mageia"!
> What is the origin of this name, please?

There was some peoples ( primarily people at the origin of the fork ) who proposed some names ( I estimated to 40/50 proposal ), and then we removed all that were not suitable :
~- already used on .org domain name ( nebula, for example )
~- unsuitable because it was too funny and not professional, ie mostly private joke in French ( tartopom, for example ).
~- trademarked by checking inpi.fr for the various class of use we wanted ( ie, while having a name trademarked for wine was not a issue, a name used in book edition could have been ), for example, toucan was proposed, but this is trademarked in France.
~- trademarked in the rest of the world.
~- already used by a old linux distribution, ( diamond linux )
~- too similar to some big name in computing field ( ubun3 )
~- already used by another software or company ( nexodus ) without being trademarked
~- already used by people who could have enough money to sue ( mango ) even in a different domain
~- unsuitable and seen as offensive in languages we check ( of course, with 6900 languages on the planet, chances are high that every possible name can be funny for at least one person, but problem is when there is a lot more than one ), for example mirably ( too similar to miserably )
~- not refused by ennael ( as I proposed ennalinux :) )
~- not too similar to Mandriva stuff ( some people proposed BlueBird, which I liked a lot, except this was the codename of Mandrake 8.2, and traktopel, which was 8.0 )
~- not too long
~- implicitly, we also tried to avoid everything outside of ascii ( even if some people proposed a chinese name, they will recognize themselves ). I say implictly because almost everything was ascii.

We also tried to get a name which could be used for design ( ie, we try to avoid turd linux ), with name not already taken everywhere, with .com availiable, and with a possible good catch phrase but we had to relax theses checks, as the twitter account was not available, and as the .com domain name was already taken ( but that's not a issue, IMHO ). And I
think no one thought of the design/catchphrase stuff in the last run.
And so basically, after removing more than 95% of the various proposals, only 2 names survived after the selection. And we voted to keep one ( and no, I will keep the other one secret ).
Of course, this explanation is less sexy than the other one about "this come from greek", which are true too, but I want to highlight that choosing a name is neither easy or as fun as it sound. And that we didn't start by saying "wow, greek is a cool language, let's find a word from it".

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CategoryMageiaInfo
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