Guidelines for release names

Historical Info Only
Fedora no longer chooses unique names for each release. See the Fedora Board decision here.

This page documents how Fedora releases were.

Summary

• Names are suggested by the community.
  • The fedora-devel-list mailing list was previously used for suggestions.
  • Beginning with Fedora 11, name suggestions are solicited through a wiki page.
• To suggest a name, a community member must:
  • Show how the name meets the "is-a" test. For example, "Schnozz is a ____, and so is Keister."
    • Names for releases N and N+1 must be related, and names for releases N and N+2 cannot share the same relationship.
    • The "is-a" relationship must be reasonably novel. For example, "is a brand of automobile" is reasonably novel. The relationship "is a brand of automobile only manufactured in Uzbekistan" is much better. The relationship "is a word with seven letters" is not sufficiently novel.
    • Preference is given to names showing relationships never before used in a release.
    • Names of living people or well-known trademarks or goods will be rejected by Red Hat Legal. Try to find a more unusual link.
    • Names must not contain any of the following characters which are special to the shell:

       | & ; ( ) < > { } ' " #

      Note that you can use replacements from the Unicode character set such as U+2019 instead of the ASCII apostrophe.
  • Document preliminary searches showing the name is not encumbered by trademarks or other use that makes it a bad or risky choice.
• Names are vetted:
  • by the Fedora Design team for applicability to theming
  • by the Fedora Board to make sure the name ballot is of sufficient size and composition.
    • Typically, the Board has a private vote on the entire name roster (after initial vetting)
    • The top results are sent on to Legal.
  • by the Red Hat Legal department for a more intensive trademark search
• The final release name is decided through a community vote.
• Problems are resolved through the Fedora Board and the FPL.

Suggestion table

The first row is a template provided for educational purposes only.

Name	"Is a..."	Links out	Tested	Initial Approval	Themeable	Board Approved	Legal Approved
Your suggestion -- this is a dummy	foobarific muttonchop	frobozz, whatsit
Yokuts	Indian Tribe that settled Visalia CA, Robert Laughlin was born in Visalia, CA	Yokuts, Laughlin
git turnips	people who think that git is like svn	https://www.google.com/search?q=turnip&hl=en&tbm=isch

Release Names

• Name suggestions for Fedora 20
• Name suggestions for Fedora 19
• Name suggestions for Fedora 18
• Name suggestions for Fedora 17
• Name suggestions for Fedora 16
• Name suggestions for Fedora 15
• Name suggestions for Fedora 14
• Name suggestions for Fedora 13
• Name suggestions for Fedora 12
• Name suggestions for Fedora 11
• History of Fedora release names