Whether it’s for your headphones or your keyboard and mouse, you probably use Bluetooth almost every day.
The short-range wireless connection technology allows devices to stay connected wirelessly.
Since its invention in 1998, it has been critical to the function of everything from gaming consoles to medical equipment.
But people are only just realising how Bluetooth got its peculiar name – and it has nothing to do with the colour blue.
In a post on Reddit, one curious commenter asked: ‘What is Bluetooth and why is it called Bluetooth?
‘It’s such an odd name for a pretty universal technology. And I cannot spot a single way “blue”, “tooth” or “Bluetooth” relate to it at all.’
The surprising name actually has nothing to do with the technology itself, and instead refers to the Viking king Harald ‘Bluetooth’ Gormsson of Denmark.
And his name can even be found hidden in the Bluetooth symbol.
Bluetooth might be one of the most common technologies, but people are only now realising where the unusual name comes from (stock image)
The name Bluetooth comes from King Harald ‘Bluetooth’ Gormsson who converted Denmark to Christianity. This image shows a painting of Harald Bluetooth from Roskilde Cathedra, Denmark where he is supposedly buried
While it might seem odd that a modern piece of technology should be named after an ancient king, the strange name is surprisingly fitting.
King Harald ruled over Denmark from around 958 to 985 AD after the assassination of the previous king, Harald Greycloak.
He supposedly gained the nickname ‘Blåtand’ or ‘Bluetooth’ due to his singular dead tooth, which had turned grey.
The little we know about King Harald Bluetooth largely comes from a carved ‘runestone’ called the Jelling Stone which King Harald ordered to be erected sometime around 965 AD.
Translated from the runic Danish, its inscription reads: ‘King Harald ordered these kumbls [stone monuments] made in memory of Gorm, his father, and in memory of Thyra, his mother; that Harald who won for himself all of Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christian.’
Carvings dated to a few hundred years later also show Harald Bluetooth being baptised by a priest in a barrel of water.
From this evidence, Harald is widely credited with having unified Denmark under the singular, unifying religion of Christianity.
More than 1,000 years later, an engineer named Jim Kardach was working on short-wave radio communications, looking for a way of unifying all the different devices that might be able to speak with one another.
Much of what we know of Harald Bluetooth comes from the Jelling runestones (pictured) which bear an inscription recording that Harald ‘won for himself all of Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christian’
This 11th-century engraving shows King Harald being baptised into the Christian faith which he spread throughout Scandinavia
After hearing the story of how Harald Bluetooth unified the country under a single principle, the name ‘Bluetooth’ seemed like an excellent codename for his new idea.
According to the Bluetooth company, the name soon stuck as an internal nickname for the project.
In a post, Bluetooth explains: ‘In 1996, three industry leaders, Intel, Ericsson, and Nokia, met to plan the standardization of this short-range radio technology to support connectivity and collaboration between different products and industries.
‘During this meeting, Jim Kardach from Intel suggested Bluetooth as a temporary code name.’
According to Bluetooth, Kardach was later quoted as saying ‘King Harald Bluetooth…was famous for uniting Scandinavia just as we intended to unite the PC and cellular industries with a short-range wireless link.’
Bluetooth was never meant to last as the final name for the product, and the company eventually came up with the rather dull alternative of ‘Personal Area Networking’ (PAN).
However, just months before they needed to launch, the company realised that PAN was far too generic to trademark and already had thousands of hits throughout the internet.
Without any time to find an alternative, Kardach turned to his original codename, and so ‘Bluetooth’ stuck as the official name for the new short-range communications technology.
Inspired by the story of Harald unifying the Danes, the creators of Bluetooth decided to use the same name for their technology which aimed to unify communication between devices (stock image)
In Norway, the technology is still even referred to as ‘Blåtann’ after King Harald’s nickname.
This unusual story also explains why the Bluetooth symbol on your phone seems to have nothing to do with its actual function.
The logo for the Bluetooth product is a combination of the ninth-century Scandinavian runes for Harald Bluetooth’s initials: ‘ᚼ’ for Harald and ‘ᛒ’ for Bluetooth.
Combined into a single ‘bind rune’, which is like a runic signature, this gives the familiar Bluetooth symbol.
On social media, tech fans were baffled by the revelation.
One commenter wrote: ‘I love that it’s named after a guy. That’s so stupid and bad sci-fiesque that it’s charming.’
‘I love that bit of trivia!’, one commenter chimed in.
While another added: ‘And all this time, I just thought it was a futuristic font for a “b”.’
