I've begun reading Charles Petzold's blog and his post of an old English poem mentioning Avalon made me think back to our choice of the code name "Cider" for the Avalon designer we are producing. Where did Cider come from? It is surprising how much time you can spend coming up with a code name...
Cider relates to Avalon both geographically and metaphorically.
Geographically, Avalon was the name for an area of England during medieval times. This area of England is now known as Glastonbury, in Somerset. Glastonbury produces a particularly stout brand of hard cider.
Metaphorically, Avalon derives from the old Irish word "Avaloch" meaning "a place of apples". Before the modern cultivation of apples they were too tart to be palatable and were commonly grown to make hard cider. In much the same way, Cider is a derivative of Avalon and makes it more palatable by providing a great design time experience.
Of course, we couldn't leave well enough alone and have gone hog-wild with Cider wordplay. Regular sync-up meetings with the Sparkle team are called "Sparkling Cider". The server at Microsoft that distributes builds of Cider is called "HardCider". I'm sure we'll have more as time goes on.