Skip to main content

​
IBBE Naming Framework

The Standard for Naming Everything Inside IBBE Version 1.0 Internal Reference Document

​
Why This Exists

Every name IBBE gives to something is a decision about what that thing means before anyone uses it. A bad name asks the audience to do work. A good name does the work for them. A great name makes the thing feel like it always existed. This document is the rule book. Every program, product, rank, credential, event, or internal system created inside IBBE gets named using what is written here. No exceptions.

​
How the World’s Best Companies Name Things

Before the IBBE rules, it helps to understand how the institutions we measure ourselves against approach naming. The patterns are clear. Apple names from the physical world. Concrete, familiar, one word. iPhone, iPad, MacBook, Safari, Finder, Spotlight. The name makes the technology feel human. It never tries to explain the product. It just gives it a home in the mind. Apple also layers: the parent brand carries the child name. “Mac” becomes the vessel, and everything inside it (MacBook, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro) inherits its weight without losing its own identity. Google names by function compressed into one word, or by metaphor. Drive, Maps, Meet, Docs, Lens, Chrome, Gemini. Most Google names are either exactly what the product does in a single verb or noun, or they borrow a metaphor that expands the imagination (Chrome: a layer over the web. Gemini: duality, intelligence). Google also tolerates invented names when the function is too abstract to be one word. Amazon names by scale and mythology. Kindle (to ignite). Echo (it listens, it responds). Alexa (named after the ancient Library of Alexandria). AWS. Prime (the first, the best). Amazon’s names carry ambition. They do not describe the product. They describe what the product believes about itself. Stripe and Linear and Notion represent a newer school: single, clean, abstract nouns that imply motion, structure, and form. Nothing decorative. Everything load-bearing. McKinsey, Harvard, Oxford name differently entirely. They use rank, lineage, and institutional language. Fellow. Associate. Visiting Scholar. The Quad. The Press. These names do not market. They signal belonging to something that preceded you and will outlast you. IBBE sits at the intersection of the last two schools. We carry the weight of institutional language with the cleanliness of modern product naming.