Bluetooth is everywhere — in our phones, tablets, laptops, mouse, keyboards, smart devices, headphones and even our cars. In the year 1996, the names Biz-RF, MC-Link or Low Power RF were all in the running for this innovative wireless technology that uses a radio frequency to share data over a short distance. The term Bluetooth and the logo that everyone recognises has an intriguing story behind it.
A Scandinavian King
Harald Blåtand, the 10th-century king of Denmark who is credited with uniting the tribes of Denmark is the man behind the name – Bluetooth. The Danish’s king’s second name- Blåtand, literally translates from Danish to “Bluetooth” in English. Harald is said to have had a dead tooth, which was a dark blue/grey colour, which earned him the nickname Blåtand.
The name Bluetooth was borrowed from king Harald Blåtand as a codename for the new frequency hopping spread spectrum technology until Intel, Ericsson, and Nokia could come up with a legally registered and formal technology name. But why borrow the nickname name of a 10th-century Danish king?
An Intel Engineer
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
An Intel engineer by the name of Jim Kardach was instrumental in formulating the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) in 1998. The SIG was composed of the major players (Ericsson, IBM, Intel, Nokia and Toshiba) in the PC and cellular industries and was the force behind standardising Bluetooth technology. Kardach happened to be reading a book on Scandinavian history at the time and took inspiration from a king who united Scandinavia (Harald Blåtand) seeing similarities in his efforts to unite the PC and cellular industries. 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”.
Nordic runes and the Bluetooth Logo
Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets. The runic alphabet has existed for thousands of years and was used to write many Germanic languages before the introduction of the Latin alphabet. The image shows the runic alphabets and their corresponding English alphabets. Note the Nordic Runes for the letters ‘B’ and ‘H’ which are the initials for the name Harald Blåtand.
The initials of Harald Bluetooth were used to create what is called a bindrune, by merging the two initials together. The new rune (bind rune) consists of the letter H (ᚼ) and the letter B (ᛒ).ᚼ and is known as the hagall rune, and ᛒ is the bjarkan rune. In other words, the superimposition of ancient Nordic rune letters for the initials of Harald Blåtand gave us the Bluetooth logo that we know today.
There you have it, the name Bluetooth and it’s logo both dates back more than a millennium!
