What does Tesugen mean?

I saw in my referrer log that someone had searched for “tesugen meaning”, so I thought I should explain what it means.

The first time I used the word was as a name for my company’s internal chat server, which was an experiment in refactoring. Petri had installed a Java chat server he’d found on the net, and it was a textbook example in “svinig kod” (swinish code). I refactored it and it turned out quite nice.

The origin of the name was a memory of a friend of mine, who, during the last days of working for a company, set up a Silicon Graphics station. I guess he was a bit bored and eager to start working for his new employer, so to cheer things up he named the machine “kaffesugen”, which is an adjective meaning “someone that has a desire for coffee”. I do drink coffee, but I’m more of a tea person, really. So “tesugen” means “someone that has a desire for tea”.

At the time I was very into Zen, so I really liked the word “tesugen”, because it could be a Japanese word. (There’s actually a Zen master called Tetsugen, I think.) Since then, I’ve used the word for login names (not passwords, though!) and for small toy projects. The chat server still is called Tesugen, and the Cocoa client is called Xugen.