We live in the age of the acronym. Our language is now littered with more acronyms than at any other time in history, with more being added every day. We are inundated, swamped, awash with acronyms. We even have an acronym (TLA) for referring to acronyms.
The right acronym can make all the difference between the success and the failure of a product or idea, and for this reason considerable effort sometimes goes into creating just the right acronym.
In some cases the result is an acronym which is in good harmony with what it represents: PAWS (Progressive Animal Welfare Society); MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving). In other cases the acronym has good force and immediacy, but is not especially relevant to what it represents: NOW (National Organization of Women). On the other hand, the striving for a catchy acronym can lead to a labored and contrived construction: DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education).
In some cases no thought at all is given to the aesthetics of the acronym, resulting in one which is both pointless and clumsy: AFTRA (American Federation of Television and Radio Artists); or even worse, one which carries an actively negative connotation: SAG (Screen Actors' Guild).
As can be imagined, the search for the right acronym for our protocols has given rise to a protracted and sometimes emotional debate. Prior to 1997, while the protocols were undergoing development at AT&T Wireless Services, they were referred to as LSM, standing for Limited Size Messaging. When Neda began independent development of the protocols in 1997, the early, working name for the protocols was EAPS, standing for the Efficient Application Protocol Suite. This of course, is a purely engineering construction, describing the basic nature and purpose of the protocols perfectly. However, the word EAPS makes those of us with more aesthetic sensibilities physically ill.
The working name EAPS was eventually displaced by the name WHIP, standing for the Wireless High-Performance Internet Protocols. WHIP has a good strong personality, and is therefore more likely to remain in the mind of the hearer. An important component of our Manifesto strategy is capturing mindshare. In today's deafeningly noisy Internet environment, any assistance is welcome.
The price to be paid for this, of course, is that WHIP is contrived and inaccurate. First, the use of the word "Wireless" is inappropriate. There is nothing about the protocols which restricts them to wireless applications. Certainly, they have been designed with the needs of wireless applications in mind, but their major defining characteristic is their efficiency, which makes them appropriate for use in many applications, wireless and otherwise. Also, the hyphenated phrase "High-Performance" has been deliberately chosen to provide the coveted "H." A more accurate word would be Efficient, but there is nothing remotely memorable about "WEIP."
For these reasons, the name WHIP caused considerable distress among the engineering segment of the development team. Nevertheless, despite its contrived nature, WHIP persisted as a very strong candidate. This is because WHIP provides a compelling and very hard-to-resist payoff: it allows us to say, with spectacular alliterative effect:
However, first and foremost we are engineers, not marketeers, and in the end the inherent inaccuracy of WHIP proved to be intolerable, and regretfully, we abandoned it.
Our final choice is LEAP, standing for the Lightweight and Efficient Application Protocols.8.1 This leaves both the engineers and the linguists equally dissatisfied. It has some personality, though not as much as WHIP. And it is reasonably accurate, though not as accurate as EAPS. But it is a choice we can all live with.