---
layout: news
author: Torsten
---

It has been a bit of a journey, but now we have arrived: Salama is officially named.

### Salama

Salama is a **real word**, not made up or an acronym (plus). 

It is a word of my  **home-country** Finland, a finnish word (double plus)

Salama means **lightning** (or flash), and that is fast (double double plus) and bright.

As some may have noticed in most places my nick is **dancinglightning**. Nice :-)

Also **my wife** suggested it, so it always reminds me of her.


#### Journey

I started with crystal, which i liked. It speaks of clarity. It is related to ruby. All was good.

But I was not the first to have this thought: The name is taken, as i found out by
chance. Ary Borenszweig started the [project](http://crystal-lang.org/) already two 
years ago and they not only have a working system, but even compile themselves.

Alas, Ary started out with the idea of ruby on rockets (ie fast), but when the
dynamic aspects came (as they have for me a month ago), he went for speed, to be
precise for a static system, not for ruby. 
So his crystal is now it's own language with ruby-ish style, but not semantics.

That is why i had not found it. But when i did we talked, all was friendly, and we 
agreed i would look for a new name. 

And so i did and many were taken. Kide (crystal in finish) was a step on the way, 
as was ruby in ruby. And many candidates were explored and discarded, like broom
(basic ruby object oriented machine), or som (simple object machine), even ahimsa.

#### Official

But then i found it, or rather we did, as it was a suggestion from my wife: Salama.

After i found the name i made sure to claim it: I published first versions of gems
for salama and sub-modules. They don't work off course, but at least the name is 
taken in rubygems too. Off course the github name is too.

So now i can get on with things at lightning speed :-)