Onomastics: the noun for commits.to commitments

CommitsTo
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I brought this up in a beemail earlier this year and figure it should be here in the forum for posterity!

We need a noun for the commitments in commits.to. “Commitments” seems too long/cumbersome. We’ve been using “promises” (and even have the domain promises.to (and now promised.to as well)) but that feels too heavy/strong (also we can’t call them that in Javascript code for obvious (to Javascript developers) reasons). Want to help come up with a better term? Naming things is fun, right? Here’s more brainstorming:

  1. intents (on the weak side but better than pledges/vows/oaths which are too strong)
  2. hooks (that you put yourself on)
  3. indictions (the etymology/Latin is great)
  4. willeyes (sounds corny but could end up nice and memorable if we had the will to say this with a straight face – turn an “I will” into a “will I?”)
  5. relidicts (or some kind of portmanteau with reliability/prediction/etc)
  6. wagers (a thing you’re betting your reliability reputation on)
  7. claims (nice and simple)
  8. iwills (all about the I-will statements)
  9. averances (a thing you aver – not a word but could/should be)
  10. plans (probably not quite right)
  11. troths (arguably on the heavy/strong side but a great old word)
  12. medicts (edict for yourself, literally “me say”; HT Bee)
  13. mitments (cute, right?)
  14. mints (even cuter?)
  15. havers (or shillyshallies or some kind of hilariously ironic term)
  16. stews (as in the last syllable of “commits to”)
  17. assertions
  18. tasks
  19. [added way later] specs (as in specifications and also expectations)

Excerpts/paraphrasings of the beemail replies:

  1. I love indictions but hooks works too!
  2. I don’t entirely like “mints” and yet something feels right about it. Like there’s just this vague image in my head of, you know, carrying mints around and giving them to people… like commits.to links.
  3. I like averances. It’s not cutsie, and it doesn’t have the weight and slightly-off nuances of some of the non-cutesy alternatives.
  4. What’s wrong with commitments? It’s clear, it’s a real word, it makes sense… I don’t see the whole three syllables as being all that awkward.
  5. I like “medicts”.
  6. Intents is good. Claims is good. Medicts is pretty great.
  7. Most of those are terrible. “Commitments” would be my top choice … intents or claims are ok.
  8. How about specs as in both specification and expectation? Otherwise, I think I liked claim, wager, and task the most.
  9. The plainest English thing in the list seems to be ‘claims’.
  10. I really like promises, and the fact that JavaScript uses it I find to be a tell that it is the right word.
  11. “Contracts”?
  12. “Commit” as a noun [except that collides with version control]

PS: If we end up switching to the intends.to domain then “intents” is a pretty obvious choice. Also I think if we liked “promises” best we’d just call them “proms” or “promices” or whatever in the code and the Javascript collision would be a non-issue.

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Snag mints.to and I’m all in. :drooling_face:

But intents + intents.to is super clear, so I’d be just as happy with that.

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It’s available! But I can’t make it work grammatically in my brain. “Alice mints to send the TPS report”. It’s too weird even for me!

Yeah, I had wanted it to be stronger than just “intending” but maybe it works? Note, intends.to with a d.

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my vote goes towards intents. I think it’s the best candidate of them all.

Caveat: I’m not a native speaker

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I agree with @dreev that it seems like it should be stronger than “intends”. To me “intends to” implies that I am kinda planning to do it, buuut maybe something else will come up and I won’t actually do it in the end. In other words, the difference between “intending to” do something and “committing to” do something is about leaving yourself some wiggle room or not.

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But compared to omnomnastic? Sounds like a food joint I would definitely check out :wink:

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Huh. If I say I intend to do something, I usually mean it pretty strongly.

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Commitment is quite different from intent.
Just call it what it is, commitments.
People use “beeminding” (a longer more complex word) with no issues.

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I think I am with @apolyton on this one. I really don’t think this needs a cutesy name.

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