Getting Breathless Over Wireless

In the days when I used to trip over geeky pickup lines, I came across one that really cracked me up. It goes something like this: “Is your name Wi-Fi ‘coz I am feeling a connection?” In my head I wondered what if the repartee had been: “No, I am Bluetooth. And I don’t think your device is up for pairing!”

Cheesy lines apart, that was the first time, I gave Wi-Fi some deep thought. I figured the word was invented in 1999 by Interbrand when a bunch of nerds wanted a catchier equivalent for ‘IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence’. Wi-Fi was a play on Hi-Fi and it’s a fine example of how some deft naming has made our world, a hipper place.

Talking of hip nomenclature, it might help to cast a lazy eye on your neighbourhood wireless networks. I can assure you that it can be a neat source of levity. Imagine the sheer pleasure of discovering a ‘Mi-fi, Not Your-Fi’ instead of a bland network-operator name. Imagine if the Ambi Mama next door labels his network as ‘Wi Believe I Can Fi’, won’t you see him very differently?

Being inventive is a pre-requisite for nerds. Which is why on the internet, you’ll discover many genres of wicked Wi-Fi names. Here are a few samplers to get you initiated:

An IT administrator once chose ‘Hack If You Can’ as the network name. He was stumped, the very next day, when he discovered someone had changed it to ‘Challenge Accepted’.

Another online story is pretty legendary. A mother, not exactly known to be facile with her mobile phone, kept bugging her son by constantly asking him ‘which network is ours?’ The son solved the problem once for all by christening it as ‘Use This One Mom’.

The ones I like more are programmed to piss-off pesky neighbours who wish to leech off your bandwidth. ‘No Free Wi-Fi For You’, ‘Screw You’, ‘Get Your Own Damned Internet’, ‘YourNotWelcome’, ‘FBI Surveillance’ and ‘I Read Your Emails’ are telling examples of this sub-genre.

The best name award should perhaps be shared by ‘Pretty Fly For A Wi-Fi’, ‘TellYourWifiLoveHer’ and ‘The Promised LAN’. But my personal favourite is a coffee shop’s moniker. It says: ‘Buy Another Cup You Cheapskate’. How cool is that!