Every time you pair your headphones, you’re calling on a Danish king who died over a thousand years ago.
A king with a blue tooth#
Harald Gormsson ruled Denmark in the 10th century. He is remembered for uniting the Danes and, according to tradition, for bringing Norway under his rule too. His nickname, Blåtand in Danish — “Bluetooth” in English — is often explained by a dead tooth that had turned dark blue or grey.
A code name over a beer#
In the mid-1990s, Intel, Ericsson and Nokia started working together on a short-range radio standard, meant to connect phones and computers without cables. They needed a name for the project.
Late 1997, after a wireless seminar in Toronto, Jim Kardach, an engineer at Intel, went for a few beers with Sven Mattisson, a Swedish engineer at Ericsson. They talked about Vikings: Mattisson told him about Scandinavian history through The Long Ships, a Viking novel by the Swedish writer Frans G. Bengtsson. Kardach suggested “Bluetooth” as a code name. As he later put it, Harald was famous for uniting Scandinavia, “just as we intended to unite the PC and cellular industries”.
The placeholder that stayed#
The name was only meant to last until marketing found something better. Two candidates were on the table:
- PAN (Personal Area Networking), the favourite — but the term already returned tens of thousands of results online, so it couldn’t stand out.
- RadioWire — but the trademark search couldn’t be finished before launch.
With no other option ready in time, the temporary name went out. By then, it had already spread through the industry. It was never replaced.
The logo is a signature#
The Bluetooth logo isn’t an abstract shape. It’s a bind rune: two runes from the Younger Futhark merged into one symbol, ᚼ (Hagall, H) and ᛒ (Bjarkan, B). Harald Bluetooth’s initials.
What any sysadmin will recognise#
Nothing is more permanent than a temporary solution. A test server, a quick workaround, a placeholder name “until we find better”: if it works, it stays. Bluetooth is just the most famous example — and probably the only one with a Viking king attached.
Sources#
- Origin of the Bluetooth name — Bluetooth SIG
- Bluetooth — Wikipedia
- Harald Bluetooth — Wikipedia
- How a Viking king inspired one of our best-known modern technologies — The Local (2021)
Illustration: the two runes are shown separately. The Bluetooth logo itself is a registered trademark of the Bluetooth SIG.
