As a followup to my post on finding a name for the until then unnamed sports and activity tracking application I have been writing I'd like to thank all commenters on the blog entry for their valuable input, their ideas and suggestions and of course for their kind words. It sure has been uplifting to read so much enthusiastic posts in response to an application that has not even been released yet.

Now for the thrilling yet hard part: I had to pick one of the many, many good suggestions for an application name that all of you made. I had a few ideas and requirements what I would like the name to be like -- and maybe those ideas are valid for more than just this one application:

• The name should be easy to remember. Some imaginative and creative name that no one can remember for longer than five minutes is going to do more harm than good.
• And old-skool name like "KAktivity" (i.e., lots of K's everywhere) is not, at least in my opinion, up to date anymore. We, as KDE, have outgrown this phase, I feel. I do expect some people to disagree with me on this.
• An application name should be easy (and obvious, at least to English speakers) to pronounce. As much as everyone loves Kopete or Chokoq, their names sure are a challenge. Note that those are just two popular examples; there are other applications facing the same situation.
• Ideally, an application name describes what the program does without being too bland at the same time. I totally acknowledge this is a requirement hard to fulfill. And that "KDE Partition Manager" is indeed bland.
• The name (or a similar one) must not be taken already, or if it is, it should at least not be the name of a a wildly successful and popular application everyone knows. Also, on a side note, there's "SportsTracker", there's the (former) "Nokia Sports Tracker" and there's "SportTracks" -- a little more creativity sure wouldn't have hurt for any of these.

So that is the rational side, the requirements side. Then, just as important, there's the emotional one, the gut-feeling part to an application name: Does it sound "right"? Does it feel "good" saying, thinking or writing the name? (Another side note: There's a CMS called Polopoly. Nice name, isn't it? Now try typing it.)

Without a doubt there is some overlap between those two areas, the rational and the emotional one: A name like "KAktivitySportsTrakker" surely breaks many of the rules above, but at the same time, at least to me, it neither "sounds right" nor "feels good".

Taking all this into account I chose "Workout" as the name (initially suggested by Orv on the blog post, and then seconded by many others). It sounds right to me, it's not yet taken (at least as far as I could find out), it's both short and precise, also pronouncable and easy to remember. Not the least of its merits: It gives a very good idea of what the program actually does.

So Workout it is. Thanks again everyone for taking part in this and apologies to all whose suggestions didn't make it. I'd have picked multiple names if I could have, honestly ;-)

There will be a first Workout release of an early alpha soon. Watch this space!