What do you think of this fact?
Every time you pair your headphones, you’re saying the nickname of a Viking king. Sounds made up, but it’s the official story.
A king with a blue tooth
Harald Gormsson was king of Denmark in the 10th century. According to the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), which manages the standard, he united Denmark and Norway. He probably got his nickname “Bluetooth” from a dead tooth that looked dark blue-grey. According to Gizmodo, many scholars believe this, but it isn’t certain.
How a Viking novel became a wireless standard
In the mid-1990s, Intel, Ericsson and Nokia were working on a shared short-range wireless standard. The project needed a code name. According to Gizmodo, Ericsson engineer Sven Mattisson had read a novel about Vikings, “The Long Ships” by Frans G. Bengtsson, and told Intel engineer Jim Kardach about it.
Kardach then suggested “Bluetooth”. According to the Bluetooth SIG, he explained it like this: Harald was famous for uniting Scandinavia, just as they intended to unite the PC and cellular industries.
The placeholder that stayed
According to the Bluetooth SIG, the name was only meant as a placeholder until marketing came up with something better. The contenders were “RadioWire” and “PAN”, short for Personal Area Networking. PAN was the favorite, but it already had tens of thousands of hits online. For RadioWire, the trademark search wasn’t finished in time. So Bluetooth it was.
Bonus fact: The Bluetooth logo is a so-called bind rune made from the runes Hagall and Bjarkan, the initials H and B of Harald Bluetooth.
A king who has been dead for more than a thousand years now connects your headphones to your phone. Not bad for a working title.