This is a list of the origins of computer-related terms. It relates to both
computer hardware and
computer software.
Names of many computer terms, especially computer applications, often relate to the function they perform, e.g., compiler is an application that compiles programming language code into the computer's machine language. There are other terms however whose history would indicate that it had less to do with the functionality, and hence are of etymological value. This article lists such terms.
For a list of the origins of names of computer companies see List of company name etymologies.
Also see : etymology
It got its name because its founders got started by applying patches to code written for NCSA's httpd daemon. The result was 'A PAtCHy' server -- thus, the name Apache.
C++ creator Bjarne Stroustrup called his new language
"C with Classes" and then
"new C". Because of which the original
C began to be called
"old C" which was considered insulting to the C community. At this time Rick Mascitti suggested the name C++ as a successor to C. In C the '++' operator increments the value of the
variable it is appended to, thus
C++ would increment the value of
C.
- Daemon - a process in an operating system that runs in the background.
Acronym for
Disk
And
Execution
MONitor.
Gnu is also a species of African antelope. Founder of the GNU project Richard Stallman liked the name because of the humour associated with its pronuniciation and was also influenced by the children's song
The Gnu Song which is a song sung by a gnu. Also it fitted into the recursive acronym culture with "GNU's Not Unix".
- Google - search engine on the web.
The name started as a jokey boast about the amount of information the search-engine would be able to search. It was originally named '
Googol', a word for the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. After founders - Stanford grad students Sergey Brin and Larry Page presented their project to an angel investor, they received a cheque made out to 'Google' !
Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing e-mail via the web from a computer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia came up with the business plan for the mail service, he tried all kinds of names ending in '
mail' and finally settled for hotmail as it included the letters "
html" - the markup language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective upper casing.
Jakarta was the name of the conference room at Sun where most of the meetings between SUN and Apache took place.
- Java - It was originally called Oak by Java-creator James Gosling, from the tree that stood outside his window. The programming team at Sun had to look for a substitute as there was another language with the same name. Java was selected from a list of suggestions. It came from the name of the coffee that the programmers drank.
- Linux - the kernel of the GNU/Linux operating system.
Linux creator Linus Torvalds originally used the Minix operating system on his computer which he replaced by the one created by him. Hence the working name was Linux (Linus' Minix). He thought the name to be too egotistical and planned to name it Freax(free + freak + x). His friend Ari Lemmke encouraged Linus to upload it to a network so it could be easily downloaded. Ari gave Linus a directory called
linux on his FTP server, as he did not like the name
Freax.
Lotus founder Mitch Kapor got the name for his company from 'The
Lotus Position' or 'Padmasana'. Kapor used to be a teacher of Transcendental Meditation technique as taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
When Marc Andreesen, founder of
Netscape, created a browser to replace the Mosaic browser, it was named Mozilla (Mosaic-Killer,
Godzilla).
Novell, Inc. was earlier Novell Data Systems co-founded by George Canova. The name was suggested by George's wife who mistakenly thought that "Novell" meant "new" in French.
Larry Ellison and Bob Oats were working on a consulting project for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). The code name for the project was called
Oracle (the CIA saw this as the system to give answers to all questions or something such). The project was designed to help use the newly written SQL code by IBM. The project eventually was terminated but Larry and Bob decided to finish what they started and bring it to the world. They kept the name Oracle and created the RDBMS engine.
Company founder Marc Ewing was given the
Cornell lacrosse team cap (with red and white stripes) while at college by his grandfather. People would turn to him to solve their problems, and he was referred to as 'that guy in the red hat'. He lost the cap and had to search for it desperately. The manual of the beta version of Red Hat Linux had an appeal to readers to return his Red Hat if found by anyone !
The company was called Santa Cruz Operation as its office was in
Santa Cruz, California.
Tomcat was the code-name for the JSDK 2.1 project inside
Sun. Tomcat started off as a servlet specification implementation by James Duncan Davidson who was a software architect at Sun. Davidson had initially hoped that the project would be open-sourced, and since most open-source projects had
O'Reilly books on them with an animal on the cover, he wanted to name the project after an animal. He came up with
Tomcat since he reasoned the animal represented something that could take care and fend for itself.
When Bell Labs pulled out of MULTICS (MULTiplexed Information and Computing System), which was originally a joint Bell/GE/MIT project, Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie of Bell Labs wrote a simpler version of the operating system. They needed the OS to run the game Space War which was compiled under MULTICS. The new OS was called UNICS - UNIplexed operating and Computing System by Brian Kernighan. It was later shortened to UNIX.
The word was invented by
Jonathan Swift and used in his book
Gulliver's Travels. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and action and is barely human. Yahoo! founders Jerry Yang and David Filo selected the name because they considered themselves yahoos. However, Yahoo! today has taken the expansion Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.
