Wi-Fi is a term that is used everyday, often without regard to its meaning or origin. There are There are many theories about what it actually means. For example, Wi-Fi is an abbreviation of “Wireless Fidelity”, while Hi-Fi stands for “High Fidelity” and stands for high-quality sound reproduction.
Another suggestion is that Wi-Fi was invented to sound appealing, which has led to speculation and confusion on social media.
“Today I learned the term Wi-Fi was invented by a branding consultancy and has no technical meaning,” read a 2021 Reddit post. “And I thought it meant Wireless Fidelity this whole time,” another user commented below.
‘Wifi’ doesn’t mean anything else: it’s a play on words on Hi-Fi (from ‘High Fidelity’), not an abbreviation of the meaningless ‘Wireless Fidelity’.
— Very interesting (@qikipedia) December 4, 2020
Numerous online articles and social media posts on TikTok and Instagram claimed that Wi-Fi stood for “Wireless Fidelity”.
Elsewhere, Wi-Fi was the answer to the following clue on the famous game show Jeopardy!: “The name of this technology that allows local area networks to work without wires just sounds cool — that’s all.”
Google’s search results added to the confusion by giving mixed answers. They suggested that the full meaning of Wi-Fi was “Wireless Fidelity”, while also showing a snippet from an article claiming that the term was made up (see screenshot below).
(Google search result)
Additionally, the Cambridge Dictionary noted that Wi-Fi in business English is “an abbreviation of wireless fidelity: a system used to connect computers and other electronic equipment wirelessly to the Internet.”
So, which definition is correct? The answer is a bit complicated.
The Definition and Origin of the Term Wi-Fi
Phil Belanger, a founder of the Wi-Fi Alliance, the organization that owns the Wi-Fi trademark, said the term no acronym and did not stand for anything specific. The sentence was created as a more consumer-friendly name for the technical standard “IEEE 802.11”. It was thus a standalone brand name created for marketing purposes, without any specific meaning behind the letters.
However, in its early days, the organization briefly used the slogan “The standard for wireless reliability,” which likely contributed to the misconception that Wi-Fi for “Wireless Fidelity.”
The Wi-Fi Alliance is a global non-profit organization organization that promotes and certifies Wi-Fi technology. The alliance, founded in 1999, consists of a consortium of companies dedicated to stimulating the adoption and development of Wi-Fi products and services:
When the newly minted Wi-Fi® trademark was first introduced in 1999 by the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (WECA), the wireless local area network (LAN) industry was already a decade old but still in its infancy. Wireless solutions were available, but there was little interoperability between products from different vendors. The industry shipped fewer than a million devices, and almost all of those devices were targeted at the enterprise market.
In 2005, Phil Belanger — a founding member of the Wi-Fi Alliance, which oversaw the selection of the Wi-Fi name — told Boing Boing — a website dedicated to technology, entertainment, and culture — that the name Wi-Fi originally stood for nothing (emphasis in quote ours):
Wi-Fi doesn’t stand for anything.
It’s not an acronym. There’s no meaning.
Wi-Fi and the ying yang style logo were invented by Interbrand.
We (the founders of the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance, now the Wi-Fi Alliance) hired Interbrand to come up with a name and logo that we could use for our interoperability mark and our marketing efforts. We needed something a little more catchy than “IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence”. Interbrand created “Prozac”, “Compaq”, “oneworld”, “Imation” and many other brand names that you are familiar with. They even created the company name “Vivato”.
Belanger explained how the Wi-Fi Alliance briefly used the slogan “The Standard for Wireless Fidelity,” which likely contributed to the misconception that Wi-Fi stands for “Wireless Fidelity”:
The only reason you hear about “Wireless Fidelity” is because some of my colleagues in the group were afraid. They didn’t understand branding or marketing. They couldn’t imagine using the name “Wi-Fi” without a literal explanation. So we compromised and agreed to include the tagline “The Standard for Wireless Fidelity” along with the name. This was a mistake and only served to confuse people and dilute the brand. For the first year or so (around 2000) it would appear in all of our communications. I still have a hat and a few golf shirts with the tagline. Later, as Wi-Fi became more successful and we got some marketing and business people from larger companies on the board, the alliance dropped the tagline.
Furthermore, Belanger said The team chose Wi-Fi from a list of 10 names suggested by brand consultancy Interbrand:
This slogan was created after the fact. After we had chosen the name Wi-Fi from a list of 10 names that Interbrand had suggested. The slogan was created by the original six-member board, and it also means nothing. If you break it down, it falls apart pretty quickly. “The standard”? The Wi-Fi Alliance has always been very careful not to create standards. The standard of interest is IEEE 802.11. The Wi-Fi Alliance focuses on interoperability certification and branding. It doesn’t create standards. It doesn’t compete with IEEE. It complements their efforts. So Wi-Fi could never be a standard. And “Wireless Fidelity” – what does that mean? Nothing. It was a clumsy attempt to come up with two words that corresponded to Wi and Fi. That’s all.
So we were smart to hire Interbrand to come up with the name and logo. We were foolish to confuse and dilute their efforts by adding the meaningless tag line. Please help highlight the good work we’ve done and forget the tag line.
We have reached out to Belanger to confirm the above comments. Once we receive a response, we will update this report.
Encyclopedia Britannica defined Wi-Fi as “networking technology that uses radio waves to enable rapid data transmission over short distances”.
The term Wi-Fi was coined by the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance, a global nonprofit organization formed to promote the new wireless standard. The term was suggested by a marketing agency, in part because of its resonance with hi-fi. (Wi-Fi, however, is not an abbreviation for “wireless fidelity.”)
“Wi-Fi is a wireless networking technology that uses radio waves to provide wireless high-speed Internet access. A common misconception is that the term Wi-Fi is short for ‘wireless fidelity,’ but Wi-Fi is a proprietary term that refers to the IEEE 802.11x standards,” explains Washington Technology Solutions, a consolidated technology services firm for the state of Washington.
We’ve reached out to the Wi-Fi Alliance for comment and will update this article if we receive a response.
This wasn’t the first time we looked at a claim about Wi-Fi. In April 2017, we investigated whether a group of Danish students demonstrated that Wi-Fi signals were harmful to people’s health in a study using routers and cress seeds.
Sources:
Contact Us | Wi-Fi Alliance. https://www.wi-fi.org/contact-us. Retrieved July 15, 2024.
LaCapria, Kim. “Do Wi-Fi Signals Impede Plant Growth?” SniffingApril 8, 2017, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/cress-wifi-experiment/.
Who We Are | Wi-Fi Alliance. https://www.wi-fi.org/who-we-are. Retrieved July 15, 2024.
Wi-Fi | Definition, Name & Facts | Britannica. June 27, 2024, https://www.britannica.com/technology/Wi-Fi.
WiFi Definition and Meaning | WaTech. https://watech.wa.gov/wifi-definition-and-meaning. Accessed July 15, 2024.