Spelling WiFi vs. Wi-Fi

Findings via google:

  • WiFi 2,43*10^9 findings
  • Wi-Fi 4,16 *10^9 findings

What keyword would you enter when you are searching for something Wi-Fi related?

  • WiFi
  • Wi-Fi
  • WLAN

0 voters

Background of this question: Computers are picky. When searching in the OpenWrt wiki, it makes a difference if you are searching for Wi-fi or for WiFi (test it yourself). We should have a common spelling throughout the wiki, which leads to a good search result for the users.

Never "WLAN", though I'd expect that the search returned the same results for "wifi" and "wi-fi", though perhaps in different orders.

1 Like

WiFi is a more popular search term.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=WiFi,Wi-Fi

Although the official name is Wi-Fi but the logo is just WiFi

https://www.wi-fi.org/

4 Likes

Nice!

including WLAN: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=WiFi,Wi-Fi,WLAN
Interesting to see the dominance of each word in separate countries, down to WLAN which seems to be a German thing :), and still more popular than Wi-Fi.

4 Likes

Most of the related external sources use the correct terminology.
LuCI and LuCI apps are supposed to use it as well.
So, if we choose an alternative standard, it may lead to inconsistency.
Although it may not be critical in case of the wiki, but deviating from the official terminology is a risky path and we should carefully consider whether we really need to take it or not.

See also: https://openwrt.org/toh/d-link/start

I use WiFi when search for anything related to WiFi.

1 Like

I'm using "wifi" when searching for Wi-Fi related stuff but "Wi-Fi" when explicitely mentioning it. WLAN sounds 1999-ish.

I think WLAN is predominantly German thing.

If you put "do you have WiFi?" thru Google translate, you get "haben sie WLAN?"

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I guess real nerds only talk about 802.11 :wink:

7 Likes

I prefer the one without the dash. "WiFi" is a lot easier to type than the other one. This is the first time that Ive heard of people referring to WiFi as WLAN.

WiFi is already well established, and WLAN sounds to close to WAN.

Besides 802.11, real nerds also talk about LTE-TDD, LTE-FDD and band xxx.

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