“The name dates back more than a millennia to King Harald ‘Bluetooth’ Gormsson who was well known for two things: Uniting Denmark and Norway in 958,” it reads. “[And] his dead tooth, which was a dark blue/grey colour, and earned him the nickname Bluetooth.”
Kardach was later quoted as saying: “King Harald Bluetooth…was famous for uniting Scandinavia just as we intended to unite the PC and cellular industries with a short-range wireless link.”
That’s a very fitting name.
As they were meant to be on the hunt for a permanent name, something changed their minds.
The options were either RadioWire or PAN (Personal Area Networking), and while PAN was the favorite, it already had tens of thousands of hits on the web.
So, that left the brands with RadioWire as a namesake, but the trademark couldn’t be completed in time for launch, thus forcing them to keep Bluetooth.
The most amazing thing? The Bluetooth logo is a combination of two symbols, the Younger Futhark runes, Hagall – ᚼ – and Bjarkan – ᛒ – which were Harald’s initials.
Reacting to this news, a Reddit user said: “I love that it’s named after a guy. That’s so stupid and bad sci-fiesque that it’s charming.”
Another user wrote: “It was originally intended to be a placeholder name while the project was in development, but it stuck. It’s named after the 10th century Danish King Harald Bluetooth.”
Someone else commented: “And all this time, I just thought it was a futuristic font for a ‘b’.”
