What Moji Means

Moji is 墨迹 (mòjì) in Chinese.

Literally, the word means "ink traces" — the marks a brush leaves on paper. Colloquially, it means dawdling. Taking your time. Not hurrying.

Both meanings fit the app. Saved articles are little marks of what you were curious about, a trail of attention left behind — a kind of ink trace. And the colloquial meaning matters because every read-it-later app I've used eventually fails the same way: it makes you feel guilty about the unread queue. The whole point of saving something for later is that there's no rush. An app that nags you about a backlog is, by design, the wrong app.

Most names that work in Chinese don't work in English, and vice versa. Either the sounds are wrong, or the meaning shifts in translation, or the romanization is something nobody can pronounce on the first try. 墨迹 happens to be short and soft in both languages. It also doesn't already mean something common in English — there's no Moji bakery, no Moji insurance, no Moji running shoes — which made it easier for the App Store and easier to remember.

The name keeps me honest. Whenever I'm tempted to add something nudging — a streak counter, a "you have 47 unread articles" banner, a notification about how long it's been since I opened the app — I remember what Moji is named after. Dawdling is the feature, not a bug to design out. The app should let you take your time.