Manufacturers: What inspired the name of your brand/the names of your yoyos?

A lot of the names that people come up with are very interesting. I was curious about where the motivation comes from.

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Proceed with Caution:
:construction::rotating_light::construction:
D***runner & Wanker…

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:sweat_smile::flushed:

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Except those ones lol

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Hey @MoosaK, is “Moosa Khan” your real name?

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I was talking to my friend who did my graphics and asked him to make a logo for ‘GK Yoyos’ and then at the last second all of a sudden changed my mind and said, ‘Spinworthy. Make a logo for Spinworthy instead.’ I’m not sure exactly how it popped in my head at that last moment, but I’m still very happy with the name today.

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i like that choice Spinworthy has an amazing right to it Glen

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Originally, I wanted the Spinworthy logo to look like the logo of some kind of antique American motor oil brand. It’s an idea I still like, but we went with a more medieval looking theme in the end with themes of integrity, honor, peace and rarity.

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For my two signature yo-yos:

Sirius was named when I was a student at the University of Washington studying Aerospace Engineering. UW’s teams are the Huskies and often goes by “dawgs.” Sirius is the dog star which combined both the school nickname and my major. The department had actually designed and launched a nanosatellite called the “Dawgstar” a few years before I started there.

SR-71, in keeping with the aerospace themed names, was named for the highest and fastest flying manned aircraft in history which is also my favorite plane ever (and realistically the reason I wanted to study aerospace engineering in the first place). This yo-yo was actually going to be named the Aurora after the theoretical successor to the SR-71 that may or may not actually exist. Right before it was announced though Northern Spin Company announced their first yo-yo, the Aurora so my yo-yo needed a new name. After considering a few (hah, found the list in an old email: Polaris, Columbia, Blackbird, Da Vinci, Excelsior) I went with SR-71 since it had the theme that I was going for with Aurora originally.

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Yes it is

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So I’m a little embarrassed to admit this, but for a while I used to get MoosaK and MarkD confused with each other. Both were coming out with yoyos around the same time and my brain was not being as attentive to details as it should have been and sorta conflated them. That’s why I would see photos of the Diffraction (by MarkD) and my brain would attach the tag MoosKa to it (for quite a while my brain also didn’t realize it was MoosaK and not MoosKa, so there’s that).

And that, my friends, is why my blue Diffraction has the nickname “Mooska”. No other yoyo in my collection even has a nickname.

I hope nobody is offended. :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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lol that’s pretty funny haha. It’s cool to know somebody’s yoyo is names after me though, even if it was by accident!

I’ve never made a yoyo before lol. I’d love to though. So now you know @MarkD is cooler than me and has a yoyo in his pfp!

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Oh dear. I thought you came out with the Moose. I’ve conflated you with yet another yoyoer.

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I think that was @Marm

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Another one of you “M” guys… argh! :crazy_face:

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haha I didn’t name the DR, but it became a tradition so W and T followed.

Smashing was because I wanted something that sounded British but fun and light hearted. The yoyo names mostly followed but trailed off during the end.

OP is because it’s a play on words and I like pink yoyos.

I’m not a complicated man at all

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Not about yoyos, but the YoYoStringLab name came as a reflection of how I was working to make the strings super consistent and to differentiate from typical home made stuff. Plus it kind of reminded me of Dexter’s Laboratory having the secret string lab at home.

Ann Connolly’s signature string color names came from stuff she was posting on Facebook, like Taboo Tattoo came from her post about getting a tattoo. Then those names were run by her and suggestions taken too. It was fun trying to blend colors for each idea.

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The name “Mark 1 Yoyos” was because my name is Mark, and Mk1 also means “version 1”, hinting at an experimental nature. It was also supposed to be just a single release of the original Diffraction, but I couldn’t resist designing more.

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Here is the entire naming line for yoyofriends.

  1. Pioneer. I guess this yoyo pioneered yoyofriends? Yeah I think that’s what the manufacture team was thinking when they named the 1st yoyofriends yoyo.
  2. Hummingbird. I was not in the team when the Hummingbird was named, but the whole idea of HB is to push the manufacturers to the limit with thin walls and tons of rim weight. The end result was a yoyo that makes a humming noise because it goes so fast on the string. Also hummingbird is very nimble and fast which suit the yoyo perfectly.
  3. Magpie. We want to do another bird name for this yoyo so we just named it Magpie. The team in China liked it and I was just naming random birds so yeah, not much here.
  4. Raytracer. Obviously named after Nvidia’s new Raytracing technology. It changed the gaming landscape. Raytracer plays super modern and is one of the best all arounder for the new meta play. I suggested this name to the team and everyone loved it. P.S I need to get a RTX card soon… I am still at GTX 970 .
  5. Sync. This yoyo is very interesting as its mainly designed by me. I want the yoyo to be a perfect synchronization of speed power and stability and we achieved that. The inspiration of the name is after Nvidia G-Sync and AMD Freesync, as you can see I really like computer technology. LOL.
  6. Dove. The bird names makes a comeback here. When we got the white delrin proto at the worlds we were actually stumped on finding a perfect name. However, Hamdog (SF Strong Future) suggested the name Dove ( He had like 5 other really bad suggestions). I immediately liked the name because Dove (yoyo) has a soapy finish like DOVE soap, and also the bird’s color reminds me of the white delrin proto. Also BIRDGANG. Thanks hamdog for the suggestion.
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I never heard of the pioneer. Do you have a pic you can share?

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