It’s so boring and dull to have Effect 1, Effect 2, Effect 3, etc. We wanted our effects to have character and to be easy to reference in tutorials or posts. That’s why we decided to give them names.
It’s common to name a set of products, not only in IT, using history, literature, biology or other source of inspiration. Like Apple previously naming its OS X after big game cats, Lamborghini naming theirs cars after bulls or Google naming Android after sweets.
Our first name ideas were cliches – chemical elements, constellations, Knights of the Round Table, book characters. But we needed something different, in the same time meaningful to us and with more than 15 options.
We went for the oldest known Slavic alphabet – the Glagolitic alphabet, created in 9th century by Saint Cyril and his brother Saint Methodius. But why? We are located in Sofia, Bulgaria and our alphabet uses Cyrillic script, which is based on Early Cyrillic, that originates from Greek and Glagolitic alphabet.
Glagolitic alphabet
So our effects’ names are actually letters from the Glagolitic alphabet with a bit of transformation to sound better in English and keep close to the original pronunciation.
Interesting about the alphabet is that every letter has meaning for example “Аз” means I or me, “Буки” – letters, “Веди” – to know, etc.
“Аз”[az] became Azzy
“Буки”[buki] became Boukey
“Есть”[iest] became Este.
“Веди” [ vedi ] became Veddi
“Йота” [ iota ] became Iott.
Fun Fact: If you have played any of the Witcher games you have seen the Glagolitic alphabet because it is the writing system in the game ?
