Bluetooth — From Old Norse to English | etymologist.ai
bluetooth
/ˈbluːˌtuːθ/·noun·1997 (as technology name); c. 958 CE (as royal byname)·Established
Origin
Named after Viking king Harald Blåtand (Blue Tooth), who unitedDenmark — the technology unites protocols, and its logo is his runic initials.
Definition
A short-range wireless technology standard for exchanging data between devices over radio waves in the ISM band from 2.402 GHz to 2.48 GHz.
The Full Story
Old Norse10th century (name); 1997 (technology)well-attested
Named after Harald 'Blåtand' Gormsson, a tenth-century King of Denmark and Norway who united dissonant Danish tribes into a single kingdom. The Swedish telecommunications engineer Sven Mattisson and Intel's Jim Kardach proposed the name in 1997 as a codename for the technology that would unite different communication protocols — just as Harald united the Scandinavian tribes. The OldNorse byname 'Blátǫnn' (blue
Did you know?
The Bluetooth logo is not an abstract design — it is a bind rune combining the Viking-age runic initials of King Harald Bluetooth: ᚼ (H) and ᛒ (B). The namewas only supposed to be a temporary codename until marketing could find something better, but it stuck. Intel, Ericsson, and Nokia allproposed