What's in a name?

Inside MySQL: Sakila Speaks

Pedro Andrade joins Fred and Scott to talk about how MySQL's mascot was named. Pedro shares a conversation he had with Ambrose Twebaze where they discuss the competition where Sakila was given her name. ------------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript:

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Welcome to Inside MySQL: Sakila Speaks a podcast dedicated to all things MySQL. We bring you the latest news from the MySQL team, MySQL project updates and insightful interviews with members of the MySQL community. Sit back and enjoy as your hosts bring you the latest updates on your favorite open-source database. Let's get started! Hello!

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Welcome to inside MySQL: Sakila Speaks, the podcast dedicated to MySQL. I am a leFred and I'm Scott Stroz. Today we are diving into something fun. Mysql’s beloved mascot Sakila the dolphin. Sakila represents more than just the logo. It's a symbol of a global community. It's open-source spirit and its dedication to efficiency and speed in the database world.

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But what's the story behind Sakila? How did a dolphin become the face of one of the most widely used database management systems in the world? And what significance does Sakila hold for the MySQL community, and how does it inspire innovation? To learn about the name of this iconic dolphin, we have Pedro Andrade a long-time MySQl-er of 17 years.

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So, Pedro, can you tell us how Sakila became MySQL’s mascot? Was there any particular reason behind choosing a dolphin? Yeah. Hello everyone, this is Pedro Andrade. So, the reason that the dolphin was chosen as a mascot is it represents, the database. Ease of use. So, friendliness. Right? Speed and agility. Because, as we all know, dolphins are very smart creatures.

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So, the name Sequela as an interesting background, it was choose from a naming competition. And I think you personally know the winner. Can you share more about the story, Pedro? Sure thing. So, as you mentioned, I've been with MySQL for a long time, and I’d always been very curious about the experience of the of the person that chose the name.

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In the early days of MySQL and through community sense, what MySQL did is they opened a worldwide contest that was called, “Named the Dolphin Contest”. And so, we had submissions from all over the world. And the way the contest went is, the winner would win a couple of T-shirts and a Palm Pilot 3C, which, for those of you that remember, that was the color Palm Pilot, which was a very advanced technology at the time.

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So, I did track down the winner. His name is Ambrose Twebaze. It took me a long time because he's not really on social media. So, after a couple of years of digging and searching, I found him, and he is in, Eswatini. Would you say a landlocked, kingdom in Africa? I spoke to Ambrose recently.

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And I have some, some, interesting questions for the rest of the community to learn.

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Thank you. Thanks again for talking to us. As I mentioned, MySQL is turning 30, in 2025, so that's coming around the corner. And we wanted to just, just revisit, the particularly the, the mascot, our mascot, the dolphin, which was name is Sakila, as you know. And you, you named it. So, this goes back to it and correct me if I'm wrong, but from from what I read, the contest itself was announced in 2001, and then, the submission or the, you know, the, the final, submission was, was chosen on, on 2002.

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Is that right? So it was in 2002. That is that sound about right when you submitted the name? Yeah. Yeah, I think it took some time, but eventually it came through email. I saw where it I was very surprised because, I mean, when you enter something, there are so many people that enter these competitions. You are not expecting anything out of it.

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I mean, we always enter competitions, so for the best or just you do it for the sake of it. Okay, let me just do this. And, what ends up ends. And so ,I did receive after a long time, I received an email that say, no, your name was chosen as the winning. Then they asked a few questions.

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If I could write a few things about, the name, what it means. The name. This, basically, it's from Swaziland. Now, this was it is now rebranded itself as, Eswatini. Sakila, basically, it's a traditional, I don't know, like, stick for warriors was warriors, that used so actually it's pronounced “sagila”. So I thought when I was writing there, because, the people who receive this name are not from Africa.

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They don't know how to pronounce this name. So it's being pronounced as "Sakila”. Okay. But for us, here in southern Africa, here. So I'm still in Eswatini, by the way. It's pronounced as, “sagila”, but it's very good because the name that came up, maybe that was the best, because now that means it's unique. It's not.

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It's no longer what I thought it was going to be, but, in terms of pronunciation, but it's still the same name because we pronounce it k. Here is a G “sagila”, which is sort of like a stick. But it's fine. I think that was the best. Sakila also sounds very nice and fuzzy. It's unique and actually.

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So that is, my favorite part about about the whole story. So, so first, I don't know if I probably told you, but when I, when I finally did find you, it really had been a couple of years that I, that I been searching and it and I'm trying to remember where exactly. Fine. Because you are not on LinkedIn.

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And I was searching the web, and if I'm not mistaken, I actually found you, a song that you had posted or a track on Mixcloud. I think that's what it was. And I probably reached out to you through there or something like that. And then when we finally talked and, you told me that the name was actually meant to be "Sagila”.

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I think you said it was a typo. It was. It was just, that much more special. And. Yeah. So you and I have looked up, “sakila”, as you mentioned, it's a walking stick. And so let me ask you, when you, that. Well, how did you hear about the contest? First of all, did you just see the the posting on MySQL.com or how did you learn about the name The Dolphin contest?

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I think I frequently used to go to MySQL.com, sometimes download the latest MySQL. And so I read about it then. Then I decided to to join the I mean, Eswatini, do is to be called Sagila. Like, you know, and some sort of a tool. It's a tool based, I believe also, MySQL is sort of a tool in some sort of application.

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It does. It has some purpose in the applications. So I thought, well, this is a tool. Let's, maybe it's a suitable name for tool like that. Yeah. It's good. And let's see. So you and so you had, you had been using MySQL. What about more generally speaking on open source. Do you, have you ever contributed code or, you know, you contributed to MySQL or, or any other open-source software?

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Are you mostly a user or do you develop or do you, have you submitted any changes of code to, to open-source software? Open-source software – I am more like a user, just like, then I was using my database because we are using it for as a PHP backend because MySQL and PHP. I don't know what you'd call that.

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In the States, I don't know, it's maybe like, if you're talking about food, I think it's what you guys call is it's is it “mac and cheese”? So they go together sort of the LAMP stack? Yes. In the technical terms, yes. So it was a tool of choice in terms of if you the PHP, you had no choice but to sort of have your back end is MySQL the other option, which cumbersome to work with.

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And in terms of me writing code, no, I'm not that fancy. I'm not that sophisticated that I can write. Well, changing code. No, I'm just, the only way is to interact with, if in MySQL, it's still the same way if I have, like, we have, websites that we sort of develop in WordPress.

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So the back end, there are always going to be, again, MySQL. What version of MySQL are you running these days, like a 5.7 or an 8 dot something? Now it's very tricky. I'm not sure because we do not host this and we sort of like it's in the cloud. It's whatever on they have, but the others have the latest.

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I would have to look in the details, but, you know, this ISP is running the latest because for some reason, for security purposes, the upgrade to PHP, I see, I think 8.2 or something, but MySQL I really haven't really seen the actual version. But it's also it should also be the latest because the others like does something behind not necessarily what's out because the others prefer to use as a production release or something.

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Yeah, I'm not really particular about that, but, the latest, that's what I can say. It might be the one version behind, but, the latest. Well, I mean, so so you have been you have been using MySQL probably. I mean, so before 2001. Right. So, 20 plus years. So for a long time. Yeah. Yeah. In all the because, I do I'm sort of like a web developer.

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But in terms of web, it's always this one has been there as long as of in fact, it's tied in with WordPress cos WordPress is sort of like the more and has become popular, the more MySQL also the open-source version also became popular. So that's closely tied together. So they've all come along with so like right now WordPress is sort of the number one content management system I think.

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And and so so MySQL is still, you probably know, the the most popular open source database. And what I mean by that is it's just it's really the most widely deployed, open source database out there. And this is, you know, set by independent studies. So I it is still, you know, everywhere and going strong.

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And so let me ask you this, when you won the contest, so you got the notification over email. And we also talked about this last time because I remember the, the prizes, were, I think a couple of t-shirts and a Palm Pilot 3C, which was very fancy at the time. It was a color version of the, of the Palm Pilot.

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And I guess maybe for some of the people that might be hearing this might not know what that is, but it was a digital organizer I guess. Right. So you would call it, can you talk a little bit about the, the I thought that was very interesting to the experience of, eventually getting the prizes, over to you because I think it took a long time, right.

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with customs? That took a long time, they mixed up the addresses, and when I, I don't know when the Palm Pilot it came out, it was the latest at that point, three years later, when I got it, I was like, oh, okay. So this is it. And I'm like, what the. And I'm like, what am I going to do with this?

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So I mean, look at smartphones. But when you look at the Palm Pilot, that's actually I think that's what sort of contributed its own in terms of bringing smartphones into the mainstream. So it was the good device at the time. It's just that, it was not a phone that's sort of like an organizer, digital organizer of some sort.

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Yeah, I had one myself, the, the black and white one. I never got the color one, but I, I remember the stylus. The stylus was kind of exciting, right, because it was a new thing, right. To to just to the touch screen with a little pen or whatever. Yeah. And then, what about, you know, coworkers or family or friends, do they know, or what was their reaction, at the time or now, if any, to you winning the the contest and naming the mascot for the most popular database software in the world?

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Okay, many guys knew in terms of when they would Google me, I don't know, for some reason they would find it, in some way, the sort of like in Africa, open source is big in the world, but it might be much bigger in Africa in terms of, it's if you look at the LAMP stack. Oh, well, it's big, big time here in Africa.

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Yeah. It's deployed widely, especially for small medium enterprises. Many people are using, they're using that stuff. So like in terms of so people they know because when they go through the documentation at that point, when the documentation was out, it was at the beginning, the first thing is that MySQL the winning name, it was up there.

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It was not needed. It was just up the the first few pages when you read it was right. The so when somebody asked me, they tell me, oh, you did this, this somewhere really like excited for me. Yeah. And happy for me. The only thing is that, like I said, the prizes came much, much later, but the excitement has already died down.

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And I thought, oh, well, maybe they got lost, but they just had the wrong address trying to deliver to the wrong place. Yeah, well, what about. What about the t shirts? Did you get those? Yeah. There were. Those would be nice. You know, I think MySQL designs good t- shirts. At that point, I don't know these days how they are doing.

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But they were really fancy with the dolphin. Yes. Well, so I'm going to make sure to get you, a couple of updated add ons. Do you still have those from back then? Probably not. 20 years ago. The the original t shirts. I had to give them out. Some people, some people liked them more than me, you know, because I know the dolphin.

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But some guys were really they love them, so I give some of them away. Okay. All right. Ambrose. Well, I don't know. Do you have any anything you'd like to tell the the community or the the MySQL-ers, as we call ourselves, users or people that work, you know, continuing to, I guess, created maintain the software.

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MySQL. MySQL is such a great product. And I believe that in terms of like us here in Africa, it has been a wonderful product. And, we continue using it. And a lot of businesses have been built around that lamp stack, especially when you talk about WordPress. MySQL and WordPress here in Africa, WordPress deployments. Oh man, I think it's very, very big.

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It's better. So MySQL is always in the background. And so it's quite a good product for us. It's Africa, we use a lot of open-source products. So we really appreciate the work that developers are doing at Oracle. So that this product is always updated, has new features, and it's keeping in tune with WordPress, because when WordPress moves up also MySQL I'm sure.

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So this is something so you know, in terms of open-source it's been really helpful. And I believe a lot of guys and businesses have been built around MySQL. And those guys are eating right now because of MySQL. Yep. Yeah, I like to I like to always just say that, open-source is is built, you know, by the people, for the people, you know, in some cases like MySQL, you have, you know, a big technology, you know, organization that is behind it, you know, the, the development, updating, support, distribution and stuff like that.

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But, but we continue to this day to, incorporate, you know, a lot of contributions from, from the community and as you know, as well, part of the strength of open-source is that since it is, you know, freely available, it gets exposed to every environment, hardware, middleware, software. And so that also in itself is essentially a, a massive, you know, like a testing, if you will.

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Right. Just by sheer numbers of deployments. So, it's going strong. And, you know, just is very happy to connect with you again. Ambrose, and greetings from New York. And, we'll connect soon. Again. Thank you. Bye bye. From Bubba in Eswatini. Thats awesome. Thanks, Pedro. So, one more question. If Sakila could speak, what do you think its message to the MySQL community would be today?

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I think Sakila. I would tell everybody that, MySQL is as strong as agile and as easy to use as ever, you know, as it kind of as the saying goes, there are many fish in the sea, but there's only one Sakila. Thank you. I have a question for you. Are devinette we see in French? To see if you know, first of all, because some people ask for some time and let's see if one of the, of you guys know is Sakila male or female.

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So I have a there's a twist to the to that story. At the heart of the story, there's a twist, right? So while, official documentation out there talks about Saki being a female name, you know, from, Ambrose's home country, it is actually, a typo in the submission. So when I spoke to Ambrose, I asked him if the significance of the name was somebody in his family or somebody close to him, and he kind of, chuckled.

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And then he said that he actually sent that as a typo. So he meant to send "Sagila”, instead of "Sakila” with a K and sagila is actually, a traditional African fighting stick or a walking stick, that's made in South Africa. So the reason he chose this is he was he was thinking of something useful, and secure.

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Right. So kind of like the database. Right. Very useful. And also, you know, can be used for protection in the case of the walking sticks, in the case of Sakila. You know, it's a secure database. It's a very nice story. Thank you. And it's funny that from a typo, it became, this, most famous mascot, for the database.

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It's excellent. So before the dolphin was chosen for represent the mascot of MySQL, the symbol of the database. What, other, feature was, favored to by Monty. Do you know that or not? I personally do not. I don't either. So, Monty wanted to, to be a dragon first, but has the dragon has a multiple, different signification in different culture.

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It was not chosen. And the dolphin was chosen after for all the good reasons. We. We heard that before. All right. Thanks, Pedro. Thanks for listening, everybody. That's a wrap on this episode of Inside MySQL: Sakila Speaks Thanks for hanging out with us. If you enjoyed listening, please click subscribe to get all the latest episodes. We would also love your reviews and ratings on your podcast app.

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Be sure to join us for the next episode of inside MySQL: Sakila Speaks!