this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2026
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Lemmy as a name is very poor branding. It's almost as bad as Mastodon.
I think it's pretty good. Two syllables, easy to say, no similar sounding competing platforms. What do you think's wrong with it?
Naming something after a famous person means you're starting off on the back foot in terms of SEO and brand clarity.
Digg worked well because it came out of an era where adding a second G was enough to sound techy, but it also played into the dig/bury aspect of voting. Reddit works because the name is "read it" while also being a unique string you couldn't mistake for anything else. Both have a lot going for them that Lemmy just doesn't.
Until I read this post I had never heard of this "famous" Lemmy.
That's what your post reads like to me.
That's what your post reads like to me.
Eh not that famous, I bet most people dont have any name associations with Lemmy except that it sounds kinda like "lemming". Which is sort of unfortunate though because lemmings (the de facto name for lemmy users) generally means crowd-following idiots. But as far as factors that inhibit the growth of lemmy go Id put the name way down the list.
It’s this plus onboarding. Reddit is easy to remember. It tells you exactly what you are getting. Lemmy sounds like a new lemmings games. It gives vintage when it should do the opposite.
It’s a bad name and will never become popular because it’s stupid to say outloud and on top of it onboarding is unnecessarily complicated.
Perfect. I'm in the right place.
Disagree. This is a case of the brand actually not meaning much. "Reddit" isn't great either, but people think it does because it's well known.
I'm reminded of the person who said Mario was a character designed from the ground up to be marketable, when it was literally created to make a graphic of a person readable in a 16x16 sprite with three colors.