Where do the ServiceNow names come from? #3 - Population

[Willem]

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?