In the software development world there is the trend to change the major version number when releasing a totally new product. Examples are angular/angular2 or ionic/ionic2 and others. The reason is most probably marketing but the effect can boomerang when users can't find 'angular2' results because of the 'angular' result noise.

Ubuntu has had a different approach by having a second product name (Wily Werewolf, Xenial Xerus, Yakkety Yak, Zesty Zapus, etc.) which is also very unique. So in order to find out how to configure something in Ubuntu 16.10 I can look for: "Yakkety Yak smtp allow unsecure" and this will probably yield about 0 results from other Ubuntu versions.

Are you aware of a better idea than Ubunutu's one?