> I wanted her take on Wanderfugl , the AI-powered map I've been building full-time.
I can at least give you one piece of advice. Before you decide on a company or product name, take the time to speak it out loud so you can get a sense of how it sounds.
I grew up in Norway and there's this idea in Europe of someone who breaks from corporate culture and hikes and camps a lot (called wandervogel in german). I also liked how when pronounced in Norwegian or Swedish it sounds like wander full. I like the idea of someone who is full of wander.
In Swedish the G wouldn't be silent so it wouldn't really be all that much like "wonderful"; "vanderfugel" is the closest thing I could come up with for how I'd pronounce it with some leniency.
The weird thing is that half of the uses of the name on that landing page spell it as "Wanderfull". All of the mock-up screencaps use it, and at the bottom with "Be one of the first people shaping Wanderfull" etc.
Also, do it assuming different linguistic backgrounds. It could sound dramatically different by people that speak English but as second language, which are going to be a whole lot of your users, even if the application is in English.
I'm a native speaker of English, northern California dialect. I pronounce every one of those letters, to varying degrees. Some just affect the mouth shape by subtle amounts, but it is there.
Just FYI, I would read it out loud in English as “wander fuggle”. I would assume most Americans would pronounce the ‘g’.
I thought ‘wanderfugl’ was a throwback to ~15 years ago when it was fashionable to use a word but leave out vowels for no reason, like Flickr/
/Tumblr/Scribd/Blendr.
> I wanted her take on Wanderfugl , the AI-powered map I've been building full-time.
I can at least give you one piece of advice. Before you decide on a company or product name, take the time to speak it out loud so you can get a sense of how it sounds.