Retrowi-finetworkingbrandinghistory
Wi-Fi Stands for Nothing: 'Wireless Fidelity' Was a Tagline Its Own Founder Calls a Mistake, and the Name Nearly Lost to Trapeze
Wi-Fi Alliance founding member Phil Belanger has said Wi-Fi is a made-up brand name from Interbrand with no meaning, and that 'The Standard for Wireless Fidelity' was a short-lived tagline added because board members wanted an explanation.
The group that became the Wi-Fi Alliance started in 1999 as the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance, and it needed something people could say out loud. Belanger put it this way: “We needed something that was a little catchier than “IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence”.” The alliance hired Interbrand, the firm Belanger credits with “Prozac”, “Compaq” “oneworld” and “Imation.”
The name came first and the meaning never did. “It is not an acronym. There is no meaning,” Belanger wrote. The alliance picked Wi-Fi “from a list of 10 names that Interbrand proposed,” along with the yin-yang style logo.
The trouble started inside the alliance’s own board. According to Belanger, some members “could not imagine using the name “Wi-Fi” without having some sort of literal explanation.” So the group agreed to run the tagline “The Standard for Wireless Fidelity” beside the name. “This was a mistake and only served to confuse people and dilute the brand,” he wrote, and “It was a clumsy attempt to come up with two words that matched Wi and Fi. That’s it.”
The tagline lasted “for the first year or so( circa 2000)” before the alliance dropped it. Belanger still had the merchandise: “I still have a hat and a couple of golf shirts with the tag line.”
The runners-up were worse. A Wi-Fi Planet piece says Interbrand’s list included Skybridge, Torchlight, Flyover, Transpeed and Elevate, and that in the board’s scoring “the one that received the highest score was Trapeze,” with Dragonfly, Hornet and Wi-Fi tied for second. Belanger told the site “Some of the names were hilarious and horrible,” and that “Maybe half of the names were trying to underscore the idea of speed.” In 2007 Glenn Fleishman reported on Wi-Fi Networking News that Belanger had said “FlankSpeed was one of the names suggested.”
The accounts don’t agree on the count. Belanger’s 2005 statement says ten names, and the Wi-Fi Planet piece says thirteen were presented. Neither says why the board picked Wi-Fi over a higher-scoring Trapeze.
Made-up brand names keep getting explanations stapled to them by people who are uncomfortable with a word that means nothing. The explanation is easier to repeat than the correction, so it spreads through glossaries, quiz shows and press releases long after the company stops using it. Belanger’s own ask was simple: “Please help reinforce the good work that we did and forget the tag line.”