There is power in names.
You probably know that Oracle is a company, and that they sell databases. (Well, strictly speaking, they sell a database management system and some applications built on it, not databases, but we’ll forget for the moment that you’re not familiar with the distinction.) Now suppose that someone said they need an SQL database. What would you use for that?
Why, a SQL Server, of course!
(Maybe My SQL server, being more personal, will substitute for some readers, but most people are more confused than that.)
Joel Spolsky, in describing how they chose the name for Project Aardvark, wrote
Well, there are a couple of dozen products named Copilot, many with registered trademarks, so our trademark lawyer advised us to use Fog Creek Copilot which would eliminate any possibility of confusion with those other Copilot brand products. The point of trademark laws is that what you’re not allowed to do is create any confusion or potential confusion as to the origin of your product, and sticking “Fog Creek” in front guarantees that, but we have to be religious about always using the full name. I didn’t really mind, having started my career working on products like Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications for Microsoft Excel, etc. etc. After a few weeks on the Microsoft Excel team if you ever saw the word “Excel” without a “Microsoft” in front of it, it looked nekkid. [emphasis mine]
Uh huh. Yeah.
If I buy a product, “Company Name Piece Of Crap,” from a company, “Company Name,” I’ll not call it “Company Name Company Name Piece Of Crap.” I, and the rest of the world, will elide the “Company Name” belonging to the product and call it a “Piece of Crap.” Everybody will know that we’re talking about their Piece of Crap.
And so it is with their SQL server.