Why is it called Bluetooth? Because in 1996, the wireless industry briefly ran on Viking trivia. The king in question is Harald “Blåtand” Gormsson — Harald Bluetooth — who ruled Denmark in the 10th century and is credited on Denmark’s famous Jelling stones with uniting the warring tribes of Denmark (and reaching into Norway) under one crown.
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A thousand years later, engineers from Intel, Ericsson, and Nokia were trying to unite something else: a mess of incompatible short-range radio standards, with every company building its own. At an industry meeting, Intel’s Jim Kardach — who had been reading The Long Ships, a classic Viking novel, and swapping history talk with an Ericsson engineer — proposed “Bluetooth” as a codename: one king who united Scandinavia, one standard to unite devices.
The codename that refused to die
Bluetooth was never meant to ship. The official name was supposed to be “PAN” (Personal Area Networking) — until a trademark search shortly before launch turned up conflicts. The backup name, RadioWire, wasn’t cleared either. With deadlines closing in, the placeholder went to print, and the world got a wireless standard named after a medieval Dane.
The logo is his monogram
Look closely at the Bluetooth symbol on your phone: it’s a bind rune — two Younger Futhark runes overlaid. Hagall (ᚼ), the rune for “H,” merged with Bjarkan (ᛒ), the rune for “B.” H.B. — Harald Bluetooth’s initials, riding along on several billion devices.
And the tooth itself?
Why was Harald called Bluetooth at all? The honest answer: nobody is certain. The popular theory is a conspicuous dead or discolored tooth that looked blue-gray; medieval nicknames were nothing if not literal. Whatever the dental truth, the name stuck hard enough to survive ten centuries and a trademark meeting.
The part most people miss
The joke buried in the branding: Harald’s unification of Denmark didn’t entirely last — his own son Sweyn Forkbeard rebelled against him. The tech named for a king overthrown by his family now spends its life dropping connections at inconvenient moments. Some legacies are just consistent.
More names with secret histories: the hashtag’s real name is octothorpe.
Sources
- Jim Kardach’s first-person account of naming Bluetooth (published industry retrospective)
- Jelling stones — National Museum of Denmark documentation
- Bluetooth — Wikipedia (naming section, with citations)
