In this article, I'll be ranking different names of thumb drives from coolest name (S tier) to most boring name (F tier).
Thumb Drive
Let's start with one of the original and currently the most popular name: thumb drive.
Thumb drive doesn't really sound cool to me. Thumbs are, I mean, very useful, to us primates, and the term is certainly descriptive of its small size, but it doesn't really evoke that cool tech feeling I should be getting from technology.
I'll say it's a C tier.
Disk on Key
Disk on key is a terrible name for this thing. It doesn't sound hi-tech at all. I think I may be biased on this because I'm Brazilian. It sounds like you're telling me to use one of those old phones you had to spin a disk to use, because the verb for that in Portuguese is "discar."
Regardless, there isn't even a disk on this thing, nor is there a key. And even if it was a key, a key isn't particularly cool. This is just not a good name.
F tier.
Pen Drive
Pen drive is a pretty cool name in my opinion. Again, I may be biased since we call it pen drive all the time, but I swear I have a reason for this.
When you think of hi-tech, what do you think of? That's right: spaceships. And in spaceships you're going to have an FTL drive. A pen drive just sounds like that sort of drive to me somehow. I don't know what a pen would be in such context. It could be an actual pen. Like you grab this pen and you just warp to another dimension. That sounds cool. The non-volatile flash memory technology isn't the same thing, but it's a pretty cool name nonetheless.
A tier.
Jump Drive
Jump drive just doesn't make sense to me. I still can't fathom what is "jump" about it, and, even if I could understand, that just doesn't sound like a cool name, that sounds like a phrase.
It sounds like you're telling me to jump into a card and drive. Considering this device is also called a disk on key, and it's not hard to conceptualized a scenario in which you jump into a car, stick the jump drive it, rotate it like a key, and just start driving. That might have been a cool scene to watch in a movie, but it's not a cool name for a thing to have.
D tier.
Mobile Disk
Mobile disk is the coolest name for a device I've ever seen.
It's the sort of hi-tech technology you would find in a Mobile Suit Gundam. Low-tech societies save their plain text files on disks. We're hi-tech, we save hypertext to mobile disks. Now that sounds cool.
S tier.
USB Stick
USB stick is a pretty boring name, but it's not completely boring.
It's the sort of deceptively boring name you would expect a hi-tech society to have for their hi-tech gadgets. They're so used to their technology that they don't care. They have this super cool thing called USB, and they just call it USB stick because it looks like one. Although, to be honest, I'd expect a USB stick to be a long stick, like sword-sized, not thumb sized.
C tier.
USB Flash Disk
USB flash disk is rather boring as well. The coolest word here is "disk." If we replaced it by "drive" as in USB flash drive, it would be even more boring.
It just sounds too technical to be cool. Normal people would never use this term. It's too long.
D tier.
Memory Stick
Memory stick is an extremely boring name.
That just doesn't sound special. That sounds like it's just a thing. It's uninspired.
F tier.
Clip Drive
Clip drive is an okay name for a technology. It's not as good as pen drive, but it's certainly better than thumb drive.
Using the same analogy as pen drive, maybe it could let you clip through walls or something. It's not an amazing name, but it sounds very utilitarian.
B tier.
Conclusions
Overall, I'm bit disappointed by how lame some of these names sound. I mean, where are the cyber drives, hyper drives, and ultra drives? I'd buy an ultra disk. I don't even care what it is. It sounds like a must-have.