The Java Tutorials' Weblog
Why is Swing Called Swing?
Today I was asked about the product name of Swing, which of course, is the name of the Java SE package used for creating GUIs and related APIs. Since I started at Sun in June of '99 I only recalled that Swing was used as the code name and it stuck. So I asked Jeff Dinkins, one of the original Swing engineers and former manager of the Swing team. Here is the story, from Jeff.Georges Saab came up with the name...The story is: The team went to Hobees for lunch, and the topic turned to what to name the new toolkit we were writing. Up till then the name was code named KFC, which was chosen by our manager (Rick Levenson) as a way to ensure we'd come with with a better name before shipping; he knew there was no way "KFC", aka Kentucky Fried Chicken, would be allowed by the lawyers.
Some names that were tossed around included Juliet and Carousel. There were many more, but none felt "just right."
Finally after lunch, while driving back to Sun, Amy Fowler (lead engineer of the team) asked our most hip team member, Georges Saab, "Georges, you know what's up and coming... what's the new happening thing in San Francisco?"
Georges responded with "Swing dancing is getting to be really big." And that was it, we all knew it was perfect. When we got back to the office I did a global search and replace of "kfc" with "swing", and the rest is history.
Thanks for that bit of history, Jeff! Rick Levenson seems to be a manager capable of interesting motivational techniques.
Edited to add: Jeff has posted a link to this blog entry on javadesktop.org along with this most excellent graphic (Rick is on the left and Georges is on the right):

Thanks, Jeff!!
-- Sharon Zakhour
Posted at 12:34AM Dec 15, 2006 by The Java Tutorial Team | Comments[20]
Friday Dec 15, 2006
Posted by Dave King on December 19, 2006 at 10:34 AM PST #
Ah, I remember writing my first swing app (as an intern at Sun) and learning to swing dance the same summer.
Now I'm a member of the performance troupe Swing Cats (swingcats.net) and a NetBeans governance board member.
There ought to be a good application for this at JavaOne. The troupe's performed at Oracle's conference at Moscone, but not Sun's... :)
Posted by Rich Unger on December 19, 2006 at 12:20 PM PST #
Posted by Jeff Dinkins on December 19, 2006 at 12:57 PM PST #
Posted by dillon on December 19, 2006 at 03:24 PM PST #
Posted by Syhan on December 19, 2006 at 06:47 PM PST #
Posted by Balakumar Muthu on December 20, 2006 at 03:08 AM PST #
Posted by dmitry on December 21, 2006 at 09:28 AM PST #
Posted by Laurent Bilodeau on December 27, 2006 at 08:39 AM PST #
Posted by arjun on January 31, 2007 at 07:31 PM PST #
Posted by Jan de Rijke on March 18, 2007 at 02:32 AM PDT #
thank you very much
Posted by mirc indir on February 17, 2008 at 01:11 PM PST #
cool
Posted by wow gold on November 02, 2008 at 05:24 PM PST #
thanks
Posted by ekin nakliyat on November 26, 2008 at 10:31 AM PST #
great thanx
Posted by nakliyat on November 29, 2008 at 02:40 PM PST #
thanks
Posted by sohbet on December 10, 2008 at 09:18 AM PST #
Neat info. Thanks for posting!
Posted by indoor antenna on February 19, 2009 at 09:13 PM PST #
Upon first glance, I thought this was an article about the dancing style... haha...
Posted by 1 hour cash advance on February 19, 2009 at 09:15 PM PST #
I love history!
Posted by Rick Levenson on May 28, 2009 at 10:31 AM PDT #
thank you
Posted by Tuzcuoğlu nakliyat on August 18, 2009 at 04:05 PM PDT #
Upon first glance, I thought this was an article about the dancing style.
Posted by Serkan Koçak on August 18, 2009 at 04:05 PM PDT #