Mojeek, Why The Name? How Do You Say It?
Why is Mojeek called Mojeek?
One question that we get every now and again is how Mojeek got its name, whether Mojeek means anything, or has some kind of etymology related to our mission to build the world’s alternative search engine. How did a technology company with such an important and lofty aim go about choosing its name?
Naming
We know that Google started off life as BackRub, as evidenced by the much-cited paper The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine. This name lasted up until Page and Brin decided to use a misspelling of the mathematical expression googol instead. A googol is a very large number, and can be written as 10^100 or a 1 followed by 100 zeroes.
Microsoft’s Bing started off as MSN Search, and then Windows Live Search, eventually becoming just “Live Search” - before Bing. This name was chosen through focus grouping. Microsoft decided that something which was short and easy to remember and spell would work well.
DuckDuckGo’s name is derived from a children’s game, Duck Duck Goose; the person who is ‘on’ walks around the outskirts of the circle, tapping other players’ heads and calling them duck over and over until choosing a Goose to race. As their website states, it is not a metaphor.
So What About Mojeek?
Marc, our founder, wanted a unique domain name. Unlike Bing there were no focus groups involved in the process of landing on Mojeek, and unlike DuckDuckGo there were no childhood games that inspired it. In fact, Mojeek is simply a made up word based on the word ‘logic’:
- logic,
- logique, then
- mogique, then
- mogeek, then finally
- mojeek - and it was available as a .com!
The word logic, he thought, was a good one for a search engine; something that seeks to make accessible and searchable the billions of webpages which exist out there on the web. Just like “Bing” it’s short and memorable, and just like “Google” it is unique, meaning that it’s very easy to find us. That’s the logic behind Mojeek - and our founder’s very logical mind.
So How DO You Say It?
Saying Mojeek is simple; it’s a two-syllable word pronounced ‘moh-jeek’ with a hard ‘j’. In many countries this is an unnatural sound, and so we encourage the use of ‘moh-yeek’ or ‘mo-heek’ to those folks who find our name near unpronounceable. Although this is incorrect, it definitely has a certain ring to it!
Over the past 20-odd years there have been few comments about the name, suggesting that it has to be changed or we would never attract an audience. As we see increasing mentions of Mojeek online, and we can internally see that Mojeek is being used more and more, these few comments are becoming fewer.
We’ve also had people think that the name was inspired by a song off of Talking Heads’ Remain In Light, which is a great deep cut, but it was not what inspired the moniker.
What’s in a name – anyway?
