How Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa virtual AI assistants got their names

INCREASING numbers of us are shouting the names Siri and Alexa at their gadgets but how did they get these names?

ACROSS the world, people are shouting the names Siri and Alexa at their gadgets — and it’s only going to get worse.

Now that humanity is resigned to talking to tech, you should probably know where Apple’s and Amazon’s virtual assistants actually got their names from.

Apple’s HomePod. Picture: Supplied

Why is Siri called Siri?

Although the virtual Siri assistant lives on every iPhone, it wasn’t actually created by Apple, reports The Sun.

It was actually a spin-off project from the SRI International Artificial Intelligence Center.

The tech was eventually bought up by Apple for the iPhone, but Apple had no say over the name.

No one has ever revealed who came up with Siri, but we do know why it was chosen.

REVIEW: Google Home

Siri co-creator Adam Cheyer said the name Siri was picked because it’s “easy to remember, short to type, comfortable to pronounce, and a not-too-common human name”.

Writing in Forbes, he said: “Once Siri became the leading candidate, everyone on the team had their own favourite explanation of the meaning.

“Dag Kittlaus, our Norwegian-American CEO, once considered using Siri as the name of his child and liked the Norse meaning ‘beautiful woman who leads you to victory’.

“For me, Siri, which means ‘secret’ in Swahili, was a tip of the hat to our pre-named days when we began as stealth-company.com.

“I also liked the fact that it was the reverse of Iris, a software system I helped build as part of the CALO project which Siri was spun out of.

“Some liked the resemblance to SRI, which was the research institute that ran the CALO project.”

In any case, no one at the team expected Apple to actually keep the name — but Siri lived on.

Amazon’s Echo smart speaker, powered by the Alexa voice assistant. Picture: Supplied

Why is Alexa called Alexa?

Amazon has dominated the smart speaker world with its Echo devices.

And every Echo speaker comes powered by the much-loved Alexa digital assistant.

So why Alexa?

Apparently the inspiration came from Star Trek, where characters would say “computer” aloud before issuing a voice command to their spaceship.

READ: WHY EVERYONE SHOULD OWN A GOOGLE HOME, AMAZON ECHO OR APPLE HOMEPOD

But “computer” was a bad choice for the Amazon Echo — staff needed an uncommon word that wouldn’t accidentally be said out loud.

They eventually settled on Alexa.

That’s because it’s a unique word that contains soft, easy-to-say soft vowels.

But it also has a letter X, giving it a very unique sound.

So what does that mean for people named Alexa? Can they never own an Amazon Echo?

Thankfully it’s possible to edit the Echo speaker wake word to “Amazon” or “Echo” instead of Alexa.

The story originally appeared on The Sun and is republished with permission.