Alex Senoner “How’s it going with LinguaVerse?”, someone asked me a few days ago.
That’s of course not the right name of the language learning app, it’s LinguaMerse.
I came up with that name more than two years ago, when I decided to start building a language learning app. I wanted the app to be about language immersion, so I chose LinguaMerse, a combination of “lingua” and “immerse”.
But if I’m honest, I never felt fully comfortable with it. Listening to others made it even harder to decide. Some people told me the name was good, others said it was too long or confusing.
At first, I ignored my own doubts. I told myself that the product mattered more than the name. And that is true, of course. People don’t use an app because the name is clever. They use it because it helps them. And besides, I didn’t have an alternative name anyway.
But over time, I kept having the same kind of conversation:
“I’m building a language learning app.”
“Oh cool, what is it called?”
“LinguaMerse.”
“Lingo-what?”
So when someone recently called it “LinguaVerse”, something clicked. Of course, “verse” is a suffix people know, “merse” isn’t.
A few hours later, someone else told me very directly:
“You should change it. LinguaMerse sounds too complicated.”
Yes, too complicated. Two confused people on the same day. That was the moment I decided I finally had to change it.
The next morning, I woke up early, sat down, and after two years of not knowing what else to call it, I had decided on the new name within an hour:
Kameleon.
The clue had been there all the time. The logo is a chameleon, so why not name the app after it?
I didn’t run a survey. I didn’t spend weeks debating it.
I liked it. I felt comfortable with it. And that’s what mattered to me.
Will the new name change everything? No. But it changes something important for me: I now enjoy saying the name.
And when you are the person who has to keep talking about your product again and again, that matters a lot. 🙂
