We were mainly torn between choosing a name that was completely meaningless and one that was mostly meaningless, but which had some connotations to programming. We opted to do the latter. All the meaningful, descriptive names we could come up with -- like "Programming Retreat" -- are too generic and/or have the same problems as "Hacker School." (We also wanted to make sure we could get the .com, and we wanted to avoid making up completely new words.)
That is to say: We expect that for almost everyone hearing it for the first time, "the Recurse Center" will be meaningless. That sounds like a bad place to be in, however, it's a much better than where we were before. Almost everyone who heard "Hacker School" for the first time had to be convinced that one or both of the words didn't mean what they thought it did in this context.
Today is day 0. Our job now is to take these largely empty words (Recurse Center) and imbue them with our values and purpose.
Glad to hear you like who we are/what we do, regardless :)
I agree that meaningless phrases are good for brands, and much better than ones with baggage (as you say, in that regard Hacker School can't get much worse). And I believe that you will be able to properly add meaning to "Recurse Center."
My point with my "umph" comment was that "School" refers to an object/category, while "Center" refers to a blank entity, it's kind of a dead word (it also has a bit of a connotation of something formal and boring, like a business office center). I believe we like references to objects, not placeholders - "Sears Tower" and "Nokia Theatre" both sound better than "Staples Center." But I'm not offering advice, I'm just curious about your process. Did y'all consider things other than "Center"?
Yes, we considered a few others. For instance, we thought about "retreat" but decided against it because it felt too limited, and we considered "institute" but worried it would come off as pretentious.
Center is definitely kind of a "dead" word, but we'd rather err on the side of too little meaning rather than too much given our past mistakes :) (We also like the acronym "RC" more than "RR" or "RI.")
I first saw Hacker School name-dropped on a blog. It was such an intriguing name I Googled it and read up. Sounds fantastic, like something I would really like to do some day. Seeing a reference to Recurse Center on a blog would not have the same effect on me. It would have gone uninvestigated.
"Center" sounds officious, beauracratic, stuffy, and boring to my ears. Exactly the kind of place I would like to avoid and would not bother to investigate. I second "Institute" as being better; it summons to mind the Instute for Advanced Study and other think-tank, idea-cauldron kind of places.
That is to say: We expect that for almost everyone hearing it for the first time, "the Recurse Center" will be meaningless. That sounds like a bad place to be in, however, it's a much better than where we were before. Almost everyone who heard "Hacker School" for the first time had to be convinced that one or both of the words didn't mean what they thought it did in this context.
Today is day 0. Our job now is to take these largely empty words (Recurse Center) and imbue them with our values and purpose.
Glad to hear you like who we are/what we do, regardless :)