Thursday, October 15, 2015

Why? . . .


Is Siri called Siri?



Siri is Apple’s personal assistant knowledge navigator, the voice you hear when you ask your telephone for assistance.

Siri is a Scandinavian female given name. It is a short form of Sigrid, of Old Norse origin, and literally meaning "beautiful victory" (or “beautiful woman who leads you to victory”) from Old Norse sigr (victory) and Old Norse fríðr (beautiful). The name Siri has been widely used since the Middle Ages, and is a common name in Norway,Sweden and the Faroe Islands.

Norwegian Cocreator of the iPhone Siri function, Dag Kittalaus, stated in an interview in 2012 that he named the voice Siri but that Steve Jobs didn’t like it. Kittalus had planned to name his daughter Siri and registered a domain name Siri.com but he shelved the naming when his wife had a son. He resurrected the name for the speech recognition technology and his company was named Siri.Inc. Jobs bought the company and the name. It was kept, despite Job’s dislike, because Apple couldn’t come up with anything better.

(Btw, Jobs also disliked iMac and iPod but likewise they couldn’t improve on them).

Claims that Siri stands for “Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface” or that it is a contraction of Sir Isaac Newton are incorrect.


The Australian female voice is colloquially known as "Karen" and is voiced by Karen Jacobsen (above), an Australian-born and New York-based entertainer, singer, voiceover artist, and songwriter. Jacobsen is also the Australian voice in GPS navigation devices for Garmin, Mio, Navman, and TomTom.

"Siri, is it bad form to finish on a preposition?"


Btw. Microsoft’s name originated in 1975 from the words Microprocessor and Software, the product provided by Microsoft being “Software for Microprocesors”.


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