Programmers: what's the story behind the name of your engine

[Evert]

"Jazz" sounds vaguely like "Chess", which is why I picked the name.
My Xiangqi program is "Xiangqi Jazz", because I wanted to keep the name association. It doesn't actually share much if any code with Jazz though.
My general chess-like engine is called Sjaak, because that sounds a bit like "schaak" (chess in Dutch) but also vaguely like Shatranj, Chaturanga, Xiangqi. There didn't seem to be another program of that name either.

[smatovic]

"Zeta" is the sixth letter of the Greek alphabet, and is the medieval name of the republic now known as Montenegro. Because my parents are from Montenegro and i am propably the first montenegrin chess programmer i choosed this name.

"Zeta Dva" -> Dva means two, because it was my second attempt to write an CPU Engine.

--
Srdja

[jdart]

I lived in a Tamil-speaking part of Sri Lanka in the early 1980s (before the civil war). So my chess program Arasan has a Tamil name (it means "king" - "chess" in Tamil is "sathurangam", which is a bit too much of a mouthful).

from the Arasan Faq (http://arasanchess.org/faq.shtml):

What does "Arasan" mean?

Arasan means "king" in Tamil, a language spoken in South India and Sri Lanka. It is related to the Sanskrit word "raja." The Arasan website header has "Arasan" written in Tamil script.

[Dayffd]

This is some interesting material to read; thank for responding guys, even though I was not the one to ask. I hope more is forthcoming.

[gerold]

This is some interesting material to read; thank for responding guys, even though I was not the one to ask. I hope more is forthcoming.

+1

[silentshark]

Francesca was suggested by my wife (she's not called Francesca, btw). I was looking for a name which either included the word "chess" or sounded like the word "chess". Hence Francesca (sounds like "Franchesska").

I have been doing some work in the background on a new program. I would like to call it Jessica. But that's probably too close to Morsch's Chessica prog of a few years back (think that was the moniker for experimental Fritz or something..).

Also, there have been relatively few female chess programs, Francesca, Amy, Chessica, Belle(?) which was an added bit of interest.

Marcel mentioned starting his program off on the Amiga, and it was the same story for me. I tinkered with some chess playing ideas on the C64, but never got anywhere. The Amiga was a better platform, and once I got a C compiler I had what I needed to build a simple chess program. It all ran off two floppy disks - operating system, C compiler, everything, so was slow. But I liked my Amiga.

[Graham Banks]

Also, there have been relatively few female chess programs, Francesca, Amy, Chessica, Belle(?) which was an added bit of interest.

Now we also have Anechka, Danasah, EveAnn, GarboChess, Matilde, Monik, Queen, RedQueen, RomiChess, Trace and Uralochka.

[Matthias Gemuh]

When I started coding my chess engine, the national football (soccer) team of my country (Cameroon) was playing pleasant successful football.
The team's nickname is "Indomitable Lions". I therefore wanted my chess engine to be "Indomitable Lion", but that name seemed too long and I did not like the space between the 2 words.
So to shorten the name, eliminate the space, and still remain indomitable, I simply made my lion big.

BigLion

[Dr.Wael Deeb]

Uralochka.

I can't see the woman behind that name. As far as I know it's the nickname of a mountain.

True....

[Sylwy]

Uralochka.

I can't see the woman behind that name. As far as I know it's the nickname of a mountain.

Hi Gabor !

In the STASI archive Uralochka means an Ekaterinburg female volleyball team !
So , a lot of women !


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SilvianR