I Just Learned The Weirdly Historic Meaning Behind The Name ‘Bluetooth’ And I'm Obsessed
Bluetooth has been around since 1999, according to Brittanica.
In that time, the wireless technology has seen a huge leap in popularity. For those of us old enough to remember, it was once used widely for sending ringtones to friends.
These days, we prefer our phones on silent and rarely use bluetooth for sending one another things but instead, rely on it for wireless headphones, keyboards, the works.
That being said, have you ever wondered where the name came from? It’s such a staple in our vocabulary that it’s easy to forget just how weird it is.
Blue... tooth. Hmm.
Where the word Bluetooth came from
It was actually a placeholder phrase, chosen by Intel engineer Jim Kardach.
In a 2008 article, he explained: “Within Intel, I had started a program called Business-RF; Ericsson had a program called MC-Link; Nokia had a program called Low Power RF.
“At the time we were in discussions to figure out the best way to drive a single wireless standard in the industry in order to prevent fragmentation of technologies in this area.”
Which is actually very hard to imagine now, but at that time, none of this existed.
Once an agreement was made by a Special Interest Group (SIG) to formalise this into one product, he suggested ‘Bluetooth’ as a shortcode for the technology until the marketing team had figured out something better.
Kardach explained: “Bluetooth was borrowed from the 10th century, second King of Denmark, King Harald Bluetooth; who was famous for uniting Scandinavia just as we intended to unite the PC and cellular industries with a short-range wireless link.”
The name, of course, did not last as just a shortcode and actually, when the SIG applied for a US trademark it was originally rejected because Bluetooth was synonymous with “short range radios.”
As for the name? Well, according to Bluetooth itself: “The Bluetooth logo is a bind rune merging the Younger Futhark runes (Hagall) (ᚼ) and (Bjarkan) (ᛒ), Harald’s initials.”
Love it.