{"id":41,"date":"2026-09-16T11:28:04","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T18:28:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/otala.com\/?p=41"},"modified":"2026-09-17T17:21:42","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T00:21:42","slug":"matti-otala-in-memoriam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/otala.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/16\/matti-otala-in-memoriam\/","title":{"rendered":"Matti Otala, in memoriam"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Matti Otala, 1939 &#8211; 2015 \ud83d\udd47<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"257\" height=\"473\" src=\"https:\/\/otala.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/mao.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-66\" srcset=\"https:\/\/otala.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/mao.jpg 257w, https:\/\/otala.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/mao-163x300.jpg 163w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 257px) 100vw, 257px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Matti Otala (at Nokia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Origin of the name Otala<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">According to Matti:<br>1) in the army, at the same time he was serving, there was <strong>another<\/strong> Matti Niilo Tapani Lehto, who needed some serious medications for heart problems, and one time accidentallly my father accidentally got those medications (and to date the doctors still haven&#8217;t quite figured out his blood group). So, Matti was a bit annoyed with his name&#8230;<br>2) after the army, sometime in 1963, he was so fed up with the last name Lehto, that he set up to find a new last name. Using a (university) computer (quite rare those days), it needed to be simple\/easy to pronounce, follow a pattern vowel-consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel, sound Finnish, and there had to have been no-one using it currently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I can&#8217;t vouch for veracity of #1, though #2 does sound more believable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Thus Otala was established in 1963, and I was born in 1964.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Matti Otala, 1939 &#8211; 2015 \ud83d\udd47 Origin of the name Otala According to Matti:1) in the army, at the same time he was serving, there was another Matti Niilo Tapani Lehto, who needed some serious medications for heart problems, and one time accidentallly my father accidentally got those medications (and to date the doctors still [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historical","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/otala.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/otala.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/otala.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/otala.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/otala.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/otala.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76,"href":"https:\/\/otala.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions\/76"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/otala.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/otala.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/otala.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}