How did the BlackBerry get its name?

How did the BlackBerry get its name?In the real eary days of Research In Motion, BlackBerrys were very different than they are now. They were pagers without phone capability, More important than that for the purposes of this discussion, they weren't even called "BlackBerry," but RIM.

That was until RIM execs asked California-based branding consultancy Lexicon Branding to come up with a more descriptive name.

As an article in the Ottawa Citizen describes, someone had told Lexicon president David Placek that "the tiny buttons on RIM's device looked like a collection of seeds," writes reporter Alexandra Zabjek. "Lexicon began exploring different fruity names: strawberry, melon and an assortment of vegetables were all bandied about, with no success."

BlackBerry was selected because it met two qualifications- it was a "berry"-which has seeds- and implies a black colo, which all BlackBerrys were at the time the naming was implemented.

The name was also Ddeemed more unique and easier to trademark than if it had the term "mail" in it-like then then-hypothetical ProMail or MegaMail.