What do you think of this fact?
Ask a few people what Wi-Fi stands for and you’ll probably hear “wireless fidelity.” Sounds right. It isn’t. Wi-Fi isn’t an acronym. The name literally means nothing.
A name from a branding agency
In the late 1990s, wireless networking had an image problem. Its official name was “IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence.” Not exactly something you’d print on a box.
So in 1999, the industry group, then called WECA and known today as the Wi-Fi Alliance, hired the branding firm Interbrand. Interbrand pitched 10 possible names. Founding member Phil Belanger and his colleagues picked “Wi-Fi.” Interbrand also designed the logo that looks a bit like a yin-yang symbol.
Why that name? It sounds like “hi-fi,” as in high fidelity from the audio world. The idea: hear the name and you automatically think quality.
The explanation that wasn’t
Some people in the group got nervous. A brand name with no meaning? Surely nobody would buy that. So early on, Wi-Fi got a tagline: “The Standard for Wireless Fidelity.”
Looking back, Belanger calls that a mistake that only confused people and diluted the brand. “Wireless fidelity,” he says, was just a clumsy attempt to come up with two words that matched “Wi” and “Fi.” His verdict couldn’t be clearer: “Wi-Fi does not mean anything. Wi-Fi is not an acronym.”
The tagline didn’t last, but the legend did. It still pops up in trivia questions, online forums and party conversations.
According to Mental Floss, even the Oxford English Dictionary calls the “wireless fidelity” explanation “spurious.”
So the people behind the name aren’t totally innocent here. They put the fake explanation out into the world themselves. And Wi-Fi is still what it was from day one: a word that just sounds good.