D-Bus Hell

The time has come to address the elephant in the comments.

Whenever my blog hits a place with a comments section the most predictable comment I see — besides some variation of “this idiot is utterly delusional!”^† — is this one:

lol I read the domain as “D-Bus Hell”
Random commenter

I’d prefer if they focused on my actual blog content but I can’t get annoyed at people for seeing the wrong words. There’s a reason experts-exchange.com has a hyphen, and who can forget Susan’s party? I’d probably read “D-Bus Hell” myself, if I forgot my own name.

^† Why is Hacker News like that?

But for the sake of the record I would like to point you to your nearest WHOIS tool:

$ whois dbushell.com

Domain Name: DBUSHELL.COM
Creation Date: 2004-05-14T22:51:48Z

Don’t ask me what I was doing at ten minutes to midnight registering a domain name. Is there a more appropriate time? The significant point is the date: May 2004.

That was 22 years ago.

Now if I may direct your attention to the D-Bus project Wikipedia page:

Release November 2006; 19 years ago
D-Bus - Wikipedia

I rest my case.

The D-Bus project doesn’t even have it’s own domain name, for crying out loud!

So next time you see a post about D-Bus, maybe drop a comment saying: “reminds me of that dummy with a blog and a giant logo spelling out his full name!” Or something to that effect. (I’m joking, don’t do that.)

What’s in a name

To date I’ve resisted the siren call of nominative determinism so I can’t answer to whether D-Bus is actually hell or not. I considered writing a D-Bus review as a joke, but then I decided to watch paint dry. I’ve never heard Linux nerds express any strong opinions on the topic (for which they’re prone to do; see Systemd, Wayland, etc.)

I did go down the Wikipedia rabbit hole of cognitive psychology and linguistics. There’s an interesting read on Rebracketing where a word like “Hamburger” becomes “ham + burger” which was altered from the origin: “Hamburg + er”. This is a form of Folk etymology where words can change due to unfamiliarity.

Etymology

My surname could simply come from “bushel”. An imperial unit of volume still favoured by fantasy novels, before the Trollocs attack and shit gets real. “Bushel” dates back to Middle English with origins in the Old French word “boissel”.

At the risk of being part French, I’m inclined to believe an alternate theory that my name derives from “Bossall” a hamlet in North Yorkshire. But that would make me part Yorkshireman. I’m not sure which is worse.

It’s not a very common surname. If this Geneanet heat map has any credibility, the name favours the south of England. That might support the French theory? Liverpool has the highest number of Bushells though.

Bushells is also an Australian brand of tea founded by tea dealer Alfred Bushell in 1883. Alfred was born in Worcestershire, England (pronounced: Wrcstrshr).

Interestingly, Wikipedia notes:

After the Norman conquest of England; the Domesday Book noted in 1086 that in seven of the twelve hundreds covering Worcestershire, the Crown had no authority.
Worcestershire - Wikipedia

The Domesday Book always references Bossall (the Yorkshire hamlet) as Boscele or Bosciale; names that are Anglo Saxon in origin.

When I say “Bushell” over the phone my pronunciation is often mistaken for saying “Buchel”. Some sources say they’re from the same Anglo Saxon origin. These distribution maps for Bushell and Buchel cast doubt on that idea (if Forebears data is accurate). “Büchel” also has different origins if you stick an umlaut on it.

I suspect I’m dealing with multiple different names of Anglo Saxon and Norman origin. There are many spelling variations of “Bushell” and similar names in historic records (though few have survived). Most people were illiterate until recent decades so spelling variations are not surprising. It seems probable to me that whenever families adopted a spelling, a variation from the wrong lineage could’ve been written due to phonetic differences. Even if I traced my ancestry back hundreds of years, I’d likely reach a moment when a scribe wrote “Bushell” in some form and my ancestor just shrugged because he couldn’t read.

The etymology of “David” is well known despite being much older. Its roots are Hebrew meaning “beloved” and has found its way across Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

D-Bus is “Desktop Bus” if you were too lazy to click the link.

What’s in a domain name

Domain names are a strange system. They’re temporary URIs that are leased and inevitably lost. I’ve spent half my life publishing content on dbushell.com. I started using it seriously once I had a design portfolio. If you’re curious you can see past versions at:

legacy.dbushell.com

In hindsight if I knew I was going to build a career around my website I’d have chosen something more memorable. Imagine all the common words that were still untouched in 2004? dave.co.uk wasn’t taken until 2005! I don’t actually go by “Dave” myself but like the “D-Bus” thing it’s not my choice to make.

For a brief moment I did consider moving to another domain. I would have had to maintain redirects forever. It’s not a sensible “SEO” manoeuvre either, if that matters anymore…

Now that I’m running my business from valleyfold.co.uk I’m happy I stuck with dbushell.com for my personal space.

Anyway, next time you spot the “D-Bus” comment please direct them there!

Better yet, take up this blog challenge: write about the etymology behind your name and domain name.

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