Since the Choerodon platform was announced as open source on May 20th, it has received positive attention from community members, with many wondering why our PaaS platform uses the name “Choerodon” :

“Is a toothfish a fish? Is there really such a fish?”

“It’s a special name, I like it!”

“It’s a hard name to remember. How did you get such a name?”

“I assume you’ve seen the documentary Blue Planet II!”

“How does the toothfish relate to the product?”

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Let me share with you the story of how the name “Choerodon Toothfish” came to be:

Container Families: From The Captain to the Nautilus

Initially, we wanted to build an enterprise application PaaS platform based on container technology, integrating DevOps toolchain and microservices application framework to help enterprises achieve agile application delivery and automated operations management. At the same time, the team determined that the requirements of the technology stack are to make full use of mainstream mature open source components and use the extension mechanism of open source tools to build the platform, so as to create an open technology platform and system for enterprises, so that enterprises can enjoy the benefits brought by the open source community.

Since the platform is based on container technology, we wanted to choose a name related to container products at the beginning. We analyzed and studied the names of Docker, Kubernetes, Harbor, Helm and other products, hoping to get some inspiration from them.

Docker, named after its logo, is a container on a ship called the Blue Whale, which encapsulates “apps” without interfering with each other and making them easy to deploy.

Kubernetes, an open source platform that automates the deployment and operation of application containers, has an ancient Greek name that means “helmsman.” Its logo is a rudder that serves as a “helmsman” for “container cargo.”

Helm is more interesting. As a package management tool of Kubernetes application, Helm means “tiller”. “Kubernetes helmsman” operates the “Helm Helm” and drives the ship full of “Docker containers” in the sea.

Harbor is a server for storing and distributing Docker images, and its logo is an artsy lighthouse whose name translates to “Harbor.”

Our PaaS platform is based on the above tools to help enterprises focus on the business, and pay more attention to how to make good use of these container technologies. It should take a more powerful role than these. There are already containers, helmsmen, rudders and harbors, but there is no pilot “Captain”. This seems to be a good fit with our platform positioning.

After the discussion, the team decided that the name “Captain” was not concrete enough to make people easily associate with a specific thing and make people curious and want to know about it. And with so many container-related open source projects not using it, our use of “Captain” might have come across as arrogant, so we decided not to use the name.

When the name “Captain” failed, The architect of Choerodon said that as a child he loved Nemo, the character in the storybook 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, who built and piloted the world’s only submarine, Nautilus, on thrilling adventures under the sea. He used the Nautilus to attack the ships of the invaders and to help oppressed peoples and poor people.

Captain Nemo’s calm, resourceful image of justice and the Nautilus’s ability to navigate unlimited seas seemed like a good idea to use our platform, and everyone agreed. Unfortunately, the name and domain associated with Nautilus had already been registered, and the name failed.

Animal family: ‘Cheetah’ to ‘deep-sea fish’

We all feel that the name is a technical live, there is a feeling at the end of the rope.

Some people think that open source and animal kingdom has a deep origin, many open source products are named after animals, animal names can make people easy to remember and create a sense of intimacy, we can choose some special animals as the name.

One of the team members suggested the name Cheetah, the fastest animal on land. The Cheetah’s fleetness gives people an impression of agility that they love and remember, but it doesn’t seem to blend well with our PaaS platform.

Choerodon Pigtooth Fish Senior architect Shangqin Jiang proposed that blue Planet 2 recorded a deep sea fish, this fish uses tools to get food, overturns human’s understanding of fish, but can’t remember his name, can look it up use it……

Determine this fish is called Tuskfish by watching a documentary, Chinese translation for “pig tooth fish”, in the film the fish every day to the sea bed using shark’s fin and mouth to remove obstacles to find clams, biting clam swam after a long distance to use rock to hit clam shells, after many efforts eventually get favorite food clam meat to eat.

Toothfish is good at using tools, flexible and methodical in action, thoughtful and persistent, which is consistent with the positioning of PaaS platform to integrate open source tools to provide service capabilities, help enterprises focus on business, and ultimately improve enterprise digital service capabilities.

One problem with Tuskfish is that it doesn’t feel mysterious or cool enough. We wanted an ancient Greek name like Kubernates to give it a sense of mystery. As we learn from the fish Bank website www.fishbase.org, the scientific name of the genus Choerodon comes from the Greek, The word consists of two parts, choiros is the Greek word for “pig” and odous is the word for tooth. A single word can sum up the image characteristics of the toothfish. It has a memorable structure, is easy to read, and has a mysterious flavor.

Neither the Choerodon name nor the domain name was used, so we chose “Choerodon” as the name of our platform.

“Choerodon” is nice, but isn’t it a bit long to spell each time?

Give him a nickname: C7N

Choerodon = c7n


Choerodon is dedicated to building a PaaS platform with agile application delivery and automated operations management capabilities. You can learn about the latest developments of Choerodon, product features, and community contributions through the following community ways:

  • Website: http://choerodon.io
  • BBS: http://forum.choerodon.io
  • Github：https://github.com/choerodon/
  • Choerodon Toothfish on wechat
  • The Toothfish Choerodon

Welcome to join the Choerodon Toothfish community to create an open ecological platform for enterprise digital services.