Posted on 4 Comments

Sakila the Tequila Dolphin?

A few years back, MySQL (the company) has let its trademark application on the name Sakila expire. As you may (or may not) remember, around 2002 there was a grand naming competition for the new logo dolphin, and Sakila name won, over other interesting names like Finn, and corny blah like Flipper (I know this because I was the person wading through the spreadsheet with all the submissions, extracting a shortlist for Monty and David).
(By the way, MySQL docs team lead Stefan Hinz named his son Finn. I don’t know if there’s a connection 😉

Anyway, a bit later but still a few years ago already, the name Sakila was registered by the Jose Cuervo company, of global tequila fame. You can easily see this at uspto.gov.
So, I’m just curious does anyone know of a Cuervo product that uses that name now, or is it a dormant trademark? Is there a relevance to the name sakila in Mexican Spanish? The name originates in Africa…. if there’s no Mexican connection, chances are there’s a MySQL fan in the Cuervo company!

Posted on 4 Comments

4 thoughts on “Sakila the Tequila Dolphin?

  1. Im mexican and i can tell you that sakila is not a mexican word, in fact we have only a few words with “k”, which make me think about “Saquila” that is a famous lake closer to the “Palenque pyramids”, but far away from Tequila, Jalisco so i dont know if there is a relationship.

    Carlos Proal

  2. Pity you replied anonymously, not sure now if you’ll read this….
    Thanks very much for the local Mexican insight!
    I’ve visited Palenque, a beautiful place. I got a grand native tour from Mexico City to Cancun by my former colleague and friend Jorge Del Conde and his wife Nadia. Was great!

    Anyway, I think the preliminary conclusion must be that there’s a MySQL fan at Cuervo 😉
    Monty did visit Mexico, specifically in October 2003 (dev meeting) and April 2004 (staff meeting).

    The question that wasn’t yet answered, is there actually a Sakila product at Cuervo?

  3. Maybe they produce a (really weird) drink with sake and tequila?

  4. I have learned with my dealings of Whiskey and Beer company execs to never overestimate their level of sobriety.

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