Surely, it’s wireless internet but where did that term come from?
It’s for sure that “Wi” part stands for wireless, and the “Fi” then must mean…..?
Surprise: Wi-Fi is a nonsense word that doesn’t mean anything and doesn’t stand for anything.
Phil Belanger, a
founding member of the Wi-Fi Alliance who was part of the selection
process for the term “Wi-Fi” confirmed this fact. Belanger and the other
founding members of the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (now
the Wi-Fi Alliance) hired the company Interbrand to create a name and
logo for their wireless internet technology, and they landed on “Wi-Fi”.
And yes, those who thought that it stands for Wireless Fidelity, it’s totally wrong.
The
story behind “Wireless Fidelity” is that, a number of the Wi-Fi
Alliance squad members were confused by the gibberish term and tried to
make sense of it, so consumers wouldn’t be quite so confused. So, they
decided to add the tagline “The Standard for Wireless Fidelity”
along with the name Wi-Fi in marketing communications. Eventually, that
tagline was dropped. “Wireless Fidelity” didn’t mean anything and it was
a clumsy attempt to come up with two words that match Wi-Fi.