Comment 3 for bug 459813

All gnome apps will use those strings. If you look under Places->Computer nautilus also uses those names.

Gnome seems to get the names from /sys. For example if I look in /sys/bus/usb/devices/1-5/1-5:1.0/host8/target8:0:0/8:0:0:0, the vendor file contains "Generic" and the model file contains "USB SD Reader". I'm not 100% sure where these strings are coming from though.

Udev knows what they are because the show up in the /var/log/udev logfile. But I don't know if it's reporting them as it sees them or if it's setting them itself.

I found one of the strings in the Linux kernel sources but not any of the others. I have not found them in the udev rules or binaries. It could be that the strings come from the device itself, which would be annoying.

I don't know if that helps at all. I only found this out, and the launchpad bug, because one of my card reader slots is mislabeled in gnome (says "Mini SD" instead of "Micro SD") and I was trying to figure out how to change the text string.