by Joe Lonergan
Have you ever wondered where Alexa got its name?
First, you can try saying Alexa where did you get your name, and your Echo
smart speaker will reply "my name comes from the library of Alexandria which
stores the knowledge of the ancient world".
Amazon developers chose the name Alexa because it has a hard consonant with
the X, which helps it be recognised with higher precision. But not everybody
is happy with the name Alexa, especially not those people that are called
Alexa. In fact, there are over 130,000 people in the US that have the name
Alexa.
Some people have reported confusion because there are so many smart speakers
out there now as users call out to the virtual assistant and so the
confusion starts. Also, some adults and kids called Alexa have been teased
by people saying their names and giving them commands. Following all of this
there was an article in the Washington Post called Amazon give us our name
back. Amazon responded to the problem of bullying and harassment of people
named Alexa by saying we condemn it in the strongest possible terms. We
designed our voice assistant to reflect qualities we value in people - being
smart, considerate, empathetic, and inclusive. As an alternative to Alexa,
we offer several other wake words customers can choose from, including Echo,
Computer, Amazon, and Ziggy.
What About Siri?
If you ask the Virtual assistant Siri, how did you get your name it will
simply respond "like it says on the box! Apple in California designed me".
If you look into it a bit more Apple decided, they had to find a name that
was easy to say and easy to remember and a not-too-common human name.
The CEO of Siri was from Norway and the word Siri is inspired by a Norwegian
word that means beautiful woman that leads you to victory. But when Apple
bought Siri to integrate into their iPhone 4, Steve Jobs reportedly did not
actually like the name, but Apple stuck with it because nobody could dream
up anything better that he liked. The name is now also used as shorthand for
"Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface.".
NCBI Technology News.
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