Project name change

In July 2008, Soothsayer project leader and developer Matteo Vescovi was contacted by a company called Applied Human Factors (AHF) in relation to the “Soothsayer” project name.

AHF, who had been selling an application called Soothsayer Word Prediction for 12 years, kindly and respectfully requested that the name of the Soothsayer project be changed, in order to avoid confusion with their Soothsayer Word Prediction product.

Matteo recognised their concern and found their request reasonable.

After carefully considering the matter and seeking some advice, Matteo resolved to comply with their request to change the soothsayer project name, despite the fact that the soothsayer name had begun to receive some attention.

The choice of a new project name eventually settled on presage.

Noun
presage (plural presages)

• An intuition of a future event; a presentiment.

Verb
to presage (third-person singular simple present presages, present participle presaging, simple past and past participle presaged)

• (transitive) To predict or foretell something.
• (intransitive) To make a prediction.

The Presage project name was chosen because:

• of its meaning, both as a noun and a verb
• it was not used by any other software project
• it had a similar evocative and mysterious feel to it