It is well known in the ServiceNow Community that releases are named after cities. What is not known is how it is decided what city will be used for the naming.
Investigation
Triggered by the questions and suggestions in both the Community and LinkedIn, this series will investigate possible options to determine the names. Why not "U" for "Utrecht" or a city in India? Hopefully we can figure this out together. If you have any alternate theories you would like to investigate, please leave in the comments. If you know on what basis a city is picked, also please let us know!
Population of cities
Are the ServiceNow version names based on the cities with the largest population?
Current version/city names
To determine if this is the case, a comparison is made using the population according to Bing as well as using the UN population estimates of 2018. The latter only contains data of 81 cities larger than 5 million inhabitants. With the following results:
|
Release name |
Population Bing |
Population according to UN |
|
Aspen |
7.004 |
#N/A |
|
Berlin |
3.769.495 |
#N/A |
|
Calgary |
1.239.220 |
#N/A |
|
Dublin |
525.383 |
#N/A |
|
Eureka |
26.998 |
#N/A |
|
Fuji |
245.015 |
#N/A |
|
Geneva |
201.741 |
#N/A |
|
Helsinki |
564.474 |
#N/A |
|
Istanbul |
15.462.452 |
14,751,000 |
|
Jakarta |
10.562.088 |
10,517,000 |
|
Kingston |
662.435 |
#N/A |
|
London |
8.961.989 |
9,046,000 |
|
Madrid |
3.233.527 |
6,497,000 |
|
New York |
19.542.209 |
18,819,000 |
|
Orlando |
307.573 |
#N/A |
|
Paris |
2.244.000 |
10,901,000 |
|
Quebec |
8.575.779 |
#N/A |
|
Rome |
2.645.907 |
#N/A |
|
San Diego |
1.386.932 |
#N/A |
|
Tokyo |
14.043.239 |
#N/A |
|
Utah |
3.161.105 |
#N/A |
|
Vancouver |
631.486 |
#N/A |
|
Washington |
7.614.893 |
#N/A |
(#N/A = no data is found)
Based on these results Istanbul, London, Madrid, New York, and Paris belong to the 81 largest cities of the world according to the UN data. So, 21,7% of the versions are in the top 81 list. But that does not mean that the city chosen for that letter has the highest population for that letter.
In total 78,3% of the city/version names are not in the 81 cities with the highest population. This means that the city/version names are not based on population (alone).
Alternative: Alphabetic city names based on population size
The below list is generated based on the UN population estimates of 2018. This would be the list of versioning numbers if the population of those cities would be the determining factor:
|
City |
First letter |
Country |
population |
|
Ahmedabad |
A |
India |
7,681,000 |
|
Baghdad |
B |
Iraq |
6,812,000 |
|
Cairo |
C |
Egypt |
20,076,000 |
|
Dalian |
D |
China |
5,300,000 |
|
Foshan |
F |
China |
7,236,000 |
|
Guadalajara |
G |
Mexico |
5,023,000 |
|
Hangzhou |
H |
China |
7,236,000 |
|
Istanbul |
I |
Turkey |
14,751,000 |
|
Jakarta |
J |
Indonesia |
10,517,000 |
|
Karachi |
K |
Pakistan |
15,400,000 |
|
Lagos |
L |
Nigeria |
13,463,000 |
|
Madrid |
M |
Spain |
6,497,000 |
|
Nagoya |
N |
Japan |
9,507,000 |
|
Osaka |
O |
Japan |
19,281,000 |
|
Paris |
P |
France |
10,901,000 |
|
Qingdao |
Q |
China |
5,381,000 |
|
Rio de Janeiro |
R |
Brazil |
13,293,000 |
|
Saint Petersburg |
S |
Russia |
5,383,000 |
|
Tehran |
T |
Iran |
8,896,000 |
|
Washington, D.C. |
W |
United States |
5,207,000 |
|
Xi'an |
X |
China |
7,444,000 |
|
Yangon |
Y |
Myanmar |
5,157,000 |
Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities
Please note this is not scientific research, as only the UN resource is used as the main source. You can see the Bing numbers differentiate from those of the UN, based on a difference in definition. In addition, as these are the population numbers of 2018, they could have been different at the time of determining the ServiceNow version names.
What do you think? Where do the ServiceNow version names come from? What would you name the versions? What City would definitely need to be on the list?
