Does Wi-Fi Mean Nothing? Did Steve Jobs Fear Buttons?

“Wi-Fi means nothing” — Ken Jennings

In 2024, Jeopardy! claimed Wi-Fi “just sounds cool, that’s all.” (Sounds cool?)

Wi-Fi is wireless. Wi-Fi is wireless ethernet (Wi-Fi was coined by Interbrand for the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance).

Hi-fi means “high fidelity.” Semper fi … “always faithful.”

Anyone can independently identify Wi-Fi as “wireless fidelity,” “faithful wireless,” or, at least, “wireless something” (Jeopardy! called Wi-Fi “technology … without wiring”). You’d have to be told it “means nothing.” (Even if told, you’d need to not make the association.)

(The Wi in WiMAX is officially “worldwide interoperability,” but what’s more likely to occur to a person: its worldwide interoperability or its wirelessness?)

The first use of Wi-Fi may’ve been 1998, while the first “Wi-Fi doesn’t mean ‘wireless fidelity’ ” may’ve been 2005, seven years later, by Cory Doctorow.

For a period of time between 1998 and 2001, the Wi-Fi Alliance (the renamed Wireless Ethernet Alliance) used the slogan “The Standard for Wireless Fidelity.”

In 2005, “30,000 or so” wrote Cory Doctorow “to quibble over whether Wi-Fi stands for Wireless Fidelity.” (For at least 30,000 or so, Wi-Fi meant something.)

The IEEE continued to write “Wi-Fi is a short name for Wireless Fidelity” and “Wi-Fi — short for wireless fidelity” into documents in 2006 & 2007.

While a 2007 Wi-Fi Planet article, “Wireless Fidelity Debunked,” called the notion “Wi-Fi is short for Wireless Fidelity” misinformation, it noted “even [Wi-Fi Planet] got it wrong.”

Takeaway: Wi-Fi was uncontroversially short for Wireless Fidelity for at least five years.

After Doctorow’s intervention, a former Alliance member, one of its founding members, Phil Belanger, began to advocate against Wireless Fidelity. (Citing Belanger on Wi-Fi may function as a “argument from authority.”)

Belanger: “We needed something that was a little catchier than ‘IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence.’ ”

Yet it wasn’t until 2018 that they went from version 802.11ac to Wi-Fi 6 (retroactively renaming 802.11ac Wi-Fi 5).

Belanger:

“If you decompose the tag line, it falls apart very quickly. ‘The Standard’? The Wi-Fi Alliance has always been very careful to stay out of inventing standards. The standard of interest is IEEE 802.11. The Wi-Fi Alliance focuses on interoperability certification and branding. It does not invent standards. It does not compete with IEEE. It complements their efforts. So Wi-Fi could never be a standard. … We weren’t creating standards — we were promoting an existing standard. … Later, Wi-Fi Alliance did eventually develop some standard specs, but only to fill holes in existing solutions.”

If Wi-Fi is 802.11, and 802.11 is a standard, then Wi-Fi is a standard.

“The Standard for” isn’t “Invented the Standard for.”

That Wi-Fi is a standard makes the slogan “clever”: it’s a formal standard that also sets the standard — for wireless quality.

Belanger: “ ‘Wireless Fidelity’ — what does that mean? Nothing. It was a clumsy attempt to come up with two words that matched Wi and Fi. That’s it.”

It doesn’t follow that, “we created it by ‘matching,’ therefore it means nothing.” Do all acrostics mean nothing?

“[The] tag line was invented after the fact. After we chose the name Wi-Fi from a list of 10 names that Interbrand proposed.”

Doctorow: “the nonsense, non-instructive phrase, ‘Wi-Fi (short for “wireless fidelity”).’ ”

A wireless network called wireless fidelity is “nonsense.”

Doctorow:

“Wi-Fi [doesn’t] stand for ‘wireless fidelity.’ … Wi-Fi is a pun, based on the contraction, hi-fi, which stands for ‘high fidelity.’ … Wi-Fi is derived from high fidelity, but if Wi-Fi means ‘wireless fidelity,’ then it means precisely nothing, because wireless fidelity is a nonsense phrase whose only meaning comes from the fact that you get a pun on hi-fi when you shorten it.”

“Wi-Fi is a pun.”

I can’t identify a pun. Wi-Fi is an analogy of hi-fi, not a pun.

“A nonsense phrase whose meaning comes from …”

Either it’s nonsense or has meaning.

“If Wi-Fi means ‘wireless fidelity,’ then it means precisely nothing.”

If Wireless Fidelity is analogous to high fidelity, it can be understood as “high fidelity wireless.” Without high fidelity, it can still be understood as “faithful wireless signal.”

(The managing director of the Alliance in 2007, Frank Hanzlik, “confirmed” that wireless fidelity “has no meaning.”)

Streaming Bluetooth audio was lossy, Wi-Fi lossless. Lossless might be called more faithful.

Analog radio is still a thing. Digital might be called more faithful.

Belanger said they were thinking of A/V applications at the time:

“One of the motivations was that we were trying to expand the use of WLANs to the home market, so this notion of ‘wireless fidelity,’ some people felt like if they're going to transfer audio and video around their house, then maybe that has some of the appeal. We have this name Wi-Fi. What two words have ‘wi’ and ‘fi’ starting them? Maybe it can help support our goal?”

Wireless Fidelity isn’t precise, but neither is high fidelity. “Not precise” doesn’t equal no meaning.

I did agree when Doctorow asked, in the context of a journalistic article about a rural town getting Wi-Fi, “how does it help a reader to know Wi-Fi means ‘wireless fidelity’?”

I don’t know, but that’s pragmatic editorial advice. How’s it useful to know “Wi-Fi means nothing”?

I’d assume Doctorow would admit “wireless” had meaning, but what about “fidelity”? My guess: he was thinking, “[downloaded] bits are bits, fast or slow, but of [technically] equal fidelity.” Still, faster bits, wider range bits, etc. may be experienced as more faithful.

Belanger: “[Wi-Fi] was going from two to eleven megabits.” (It was faster.)

Even if Wireless Fidelity meant nothing apart from “Wi-Fi,” it wouldn’t mean it means nothing, it would still mean “Wi-Fi.”

Häagen-Dazs is made up, but still means “ice cream.” (Wikipedia amusingly claims it’s closest to “garden outhouse.”)

Glenn Fleishman:

“Wi-Fi is a trademark and thus can’t mean anything that’s not arbitrary in the realm in which the trademark is coined. Wi-Fi had to have no prior meaning, so it’s de facto meaningless.”

The premise is wrong: a trademark must merely be distinctive. It can be descriptive, suggestive, “fanciful.” (And I don’t think arbitrary = meaningless.)

Regardless, even if Wi-Fi had no prior meaning, it doesn’t follow it had no meaning. And even if it had no meaning, it doesn’t follow it couldn’t acquire one.

Ironically, Bluetooth has no obvious meaning (in context), yet because its origin is uncontroversial, I doubt you’ll get many claims it “means nothing.” (It didn’t occur to me Bluetooth might refer to a dead tooth of a human.)

(They do say Bluetooth “doesn’t stand for anything,” which I interpret as “isn’t short for anything.”)

Interbrand:

“An enduring myth abides: the name Wi-Fi doesn’t stand for Wireless Fidelity, in fact, it doesn’t stand for anything at all. … We proposed the name Wi-Fi, as customers told us that its similarities to the already widely understood concept, hi-fi, short for ‘high fidelity’ helped them grasp the concept. The name reflects that, even without cables, Wi-Fi delivers a high-quality, lossless connection wherever you go.”

“Without cables” = wireless; “high-quality, lossless” = (high) fidelity.

Belanger thought his colleagues were philistines:

“Some of my colleagues in the group were afraid. They didn't understand branding or marketing. They could not imagine using the name Wi-Fi without having some sort of literal explanation. So we compromised and agreed to include the tag line The Standard for Wireless Fidelity along with the name. This only served to confuse people and dilute the brand. … We were dumb to water Wi-Fi down.”

But this was at odds with “Wireless Fidelity Debunked”:

“Wi-Fi continues to be a household name. Unlike what happened to Pop Rocks in the ’70s, misinformation has had the opposite effect on Wi-Fi. The brand continues to grow by leaps and bounds.”

And Frank Hanzlik:

“In the very early days of building the brand, there was a linkage to the hi-fi chronology. It was successful in creating a positive connotation of what that could mean to a user. Over the last seven years, the term Wi-Fi has become quite ubiquitous in the developed part of the world. We declared victory when we made the Merriam-Webster dictionary. We sold 200 million units last year, and we’re on track for 500 million in a few years. It’s really remarkable growth, and exciting.”

Maybe Wi-Fi has or will shed Wireless Fidelity, but even if I thought Wi-Fi, untainted by wireless, wireless fidelity, hi-fi, or high fidelity, had a spotless origin, wireless fidelity is still part of its history (its origin is its pre-history), and it would be incorrect to say Wi-Fi never meant anything.

Test: if you’re asked what the name Wi-Fi stands for, would you feel honest if you said “nothing”? If they then ask, “What about Wi, isn’t that because it’s wireless?” Do you say “No, Wi just sounds cool, that’s all”?

“Wireless Fidelity Debunked”: “Since there is no such thing as wireless fidelity, nothing could ever be short for it.”

The thing is not the word for the thing. Something can be short for a word, even if the thing doesn’t exist.

—

Not Jeopardy!, and I don’t know what show exactly, but the claim “Steve Jobs had koumpounophobia” (a fear of buttons) was on a trivia show, and is, currently, on Wikipedia.

As far I can tell, no one who knew Steve Jobs has ever claimed he was afraid of buttons.

And it’s not obvious the buttons on a mouse and the buttons on a shirt would inspire a common fear (unless it was a contagion from the common name).

Wikipedia illustrates its claim with a picture of Jobs holding up an iPad (which had four buttons — five if you count the mute switch), while wearing buttoned blue jeans.

(Wikipedia’s actual text is “Jobs had an aversion to buttons,” under the heading “notable koumpounaphobes.”)

Steve Jobs with at least five buttons

“Koumpounophobia” @ Wikipedia.org

Jun 2025

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