PR people were horrified: The thousand-year-old secret behind your Bluetooth technology

A background article on the origin of the name 'Bluetooth', derived from the name of the Viking king Harald Gormsson, nicknamed 'Bluetooth'. The article describes Harald's achievements, including the unification of Denmark and its conversion to Christianity, and tells how technology engineers chose his name as a temporary codename for a new technology, despite the opposition of public relations people.

A historical-technological background article reveals the origin of the name 'Bluetooth', known to billions of users worldwide. The name is not a technical acronym but is derived from the name of the Viking king Harald Gormsson, nicknamed 'Bluetooth' (Blátǫnn in Old Norse), who ruled Denmark in the 10th century. The article describes Harald's significant achievements: the unification of Denmark and Norway and the conversion of the Danes to Christianity, a process that took place around 965. The Jelling rune stone, commissioned by Harald, proclaims his achievements and is considered the 'birth certificate of Denmark'. In the late 1990s, engineers from Toshiba, IBM, Nokia, Intel, and Ericsson developed a new technology for connecting devices. Jim Kardach, an Intel engineer, was exposed to Viking history through collaboration with Swedish engineers and proposed the name 'Bluetooth' as a temporary codename, drawing a parallel between uniting devices and the unification of Scandinavia by the king. According to the BBC, PR people were horrified by the name due to its association with poor oral hygiene, but the codename leaked to the media and stuck. The famous logo is a combination of the letters H and B in ancient runic script. In 2023, on the 25th anniversary of the technology's invention, its founders traveled to Jelling to jokingly 'apologize' for using the name without permission and received approval to continue using it for the next 1,000 years.