Where does the name skedsheet come from?
As we were trying to come up with a name for our new product, we had a lot of ideas. Not all of them good, of course. While we were brainstorming we had a few concepts we wanted to incorporate – spreadsheet, calendar, whiteboard, scheduling. Trying to mash those words into a catchy name wasn’t quite as easy as you would think.
Trying foreign words seemed like a good way to go – that way you could have something that sounds catchy, has a relationship to what you’re trying to say, but you’re not limited to the words that I listed above. And, you have a credible story when people ask about the name.
- Work (Trabajo) + schedule = Trabadule
- Work (Travail) + Calendar = Travailendar
But, the 12-year-old part of me got way too amused by the fact that when you translate “blackboard” to Catalan, you get pissarra (pizarra in Spanish), so it was back to English.
- Scheduling + Whiteboard = Shiteboard
- Scheduling + Day Minder = Schedminder
- Scheduling + Spreadsheet = Schedsheet… or Skedsheet
After searching the web a little, it turns out that the word skedsheet is sometimes used in boating to describe the schedule for a race or group outing. Didn’t seem like there’d be too much confusion, and the boating concept of a schedule sheet is pretty close to what we’re doing. Skedsheet seemed the most catchy and the domain wasn’t taken, so we went with it.
