First the product teams at Microsoft come up with new features, new programs or new versions of established programs. Then, the Microsoft marketing people get their hands on it to come up with creative names. Therefore at some point in the beta process, normally before a beta goes public, preliminary names that the product team came up with are replaced with new, catchy-sounding ones. The Office 2007 beta was no exception. For example, “groups” on the Ribbon started out as “chunks”. The new “SmartArt” used to be called “IGX Graphics”. Internally, the new OfficeArt engine is referred to as “Escher 2.0″.

These examples notwithstanding, the greatest creativity was shown in coming up with the final name for this new version of Office. For most of the private-only part of the beta, it was simply called “Office 12″. It was an easy guess for everyone though what the final product would be called probably: “Microsoft Office 2007″. However, the marketing people decided to be extra creative this time around, and labeled it “2007 Microsoft Office”. Yet, all individual programs are still called e.g. “Word 2007″. Why not be consistent and call it “2007 Word” or “2007 PowerPoint”? Whoever came up with the great idea of putting “2007″ first hopefully got an extra brownie. In my opinion, the “2007″ first doesn’t serve any other purpose than being made fun of while everyone calls it “Office 2007″.

If you want to find out why the Ribbon is called Ribbon or what internally “WunderBar” refers to, be sure to read this Office UI Bible post.