Siri, the voice-recognition and information service adopted by Apple in its iPhone 4S smartphone, was bought by the company for $200 million in April 2010. It has been incredibly popular in the States, because it is fully featured, but perhaps less so around the rest of the globe where it currently can't search for businesses or give location-based advice.

Now it has been revealed that it almost didn't make it into the iPhone 4S at all, not under that name anyway. Steve Jobs was no fan of the moniker "Siri" and wanted to change it before its public outing. However, because he couldn't think of anything suitable to replace it, the original name stuck.

The revelation comes from Dag Kittlaus, one of Siri's co-founders. During his keynote speech at Technori Pitch in Chicago, he explained that Jobs wasn't sold on the name. Kittlaus lobbied the former Apple CEO to stick with it however, as it meant so much to him.

"Siri means, in Norwegian, 'beautiful woman who leads you to victory'," he said. "I worked with a lady named Siri in Norway and wanted to name my daughter Siri and the domain was available. And also, consumer companies need to focus on the fact that the name is easy to spell, is easy to say…"

So there you have it, thanks to Dag Kittlaus we've learnt that Steve Jobs didn't always get his way and that, in Norwegian, Siri means "a beautiful woman who leads you to victory".

Pocket-lint can also reveal that, in British English, Siri means "a slightly robotic-sounding man who tells you: "I can only look for businesses in the United States, and when you're using US English."

Do you still use Siri? Let us know in the comments below...