My original reasons for the name

I hadn't read that for a few years, but it probably stands as my best attempt, in Rosetta Stone latter years I tended to shorten it a bit. Now I can't see how that obscures the meaning, unless you are the sort of person without poetry in your soul! Even the editors of the HBR finally saw the point, having wanted (i) to reduce it too a familiar two by two matrix and (ii) give it an anglo-saxon name. I sense a little bit of NIH syndrome here, and possibly a implicit cultural filtering with a tendency to reducing rather than absorbing complexity.My original reasons for the name were as follows: Names are important, they impart power, anything of value deserves more than a phrase or acronym A name which requires a story to explain its meaning avoids confusion or association with existing concepts (the whole point of Harold's post after all so its ironic that Stephen didn't see it). There are many uses of Rosetta Stone Software complexity for example, so a name which includes that word will trigger associated meanings that are likely to obscure rather than clarify meaning. Using a language understood by less than three million people (at the time) will increase peoples attention, it will activate curiosity linked to novelty. How many successful brands are a phrase or an acronym? I was preparing for a debate with Nonaka at the time and decided that his use of a Japanese word with spiritual significance (much better than SECI) would given him the advantage, so I countered Finally, and most importantly, the fact that there was not a direct equivalent in English was important, it thus required a narrative to explain its meaning. A narrative pulls people into meaning or understanding in a way that a few familiar words will not.So that is where it came from. You probably do have to have Rosetta Stone Spanish (Latin) poetry in your soul to understand it, along with a realisation that names are not the same thing as a definitions. It doesn't obscure, it makes you think, challenges literal definitions and allows deeper meaning to emerge.