alt Hacker NewsChatGPT has a good name. It's weird and awkward but it still rolls off the tongue. And I am saying that as a non native English speaker because the name has been migrated to other languages with the English pronunciation.
In comparison, Claude's name is very bad, it just doesn't sound right and people might mishear me when I say it. I never say "Claude" when talking to other, especially non-technical people, and instead say "ChatGPT" even though I am using Claude exclusively.
Google has another problem - they advertise their models as separate products. There is Gemini and there is Nano Banana, also Nano Banana Pro. But they are all somehow under the same product which is still called Gemini. I understand the distinction but I am sure many non-technical people find it confusing.
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Claude may seem incongruous compared to the others, however it's the only human sounding name, compared to the robotic "chatgpt" or others that sound generic or bland company names (Gemini, perplexity).
They intentionally chose a more bland sounding name, as, I assume, they wanted to emphasise the "safe" nature compared to their competitors.
As more information comes out about openai, people may choose to move to for other reasons, such as
- Openai adding ads
- Openai's president donating millions to a MAGA PAC
- Openai getting closer to the US military whilst anthropic standing their ground and rejecting them.
- Openai's recent products not being at the top of the benchmarks
The choice is yours.
I have heard "cloud code" many times from colleagues who do not really know what either cloud OR Claude Code is more than "stuff we should use".
They initially wanted to call it just "Gemini 2.5 Flash Image (preview)" but the Internet stuck with the anonymous codename Nano-banana from LMArena because it's interesting and quirky. Google didn't officially adopt it until several days after the public release, exactly because of what you say. Eventually, not using it in their comms got more confusing because regular people were asking how they can find this Nano banana thing everyone is hyped about.
> ChatGPT has a good name
I don't know but around here common people all say "Chatty" nowadays, and also most people if writing the correct name fail to spell "gpt" right quite often in chat.
Absolutely no enduser knows what 'GPT' stands for and if you tell them it's Generative Pre-trained Transformer they're even more confused than before.
There's better brand names out there.
Claude is a terrible name but Gemini is pretty good.
In Japan many people call it "Chappie" (チャッピー), which I think is much easier to say and less awkward, haha. I see a lot of people using it here daily.
I feel like OpenAI should lean into that.