A
* ABEND — this term is short for abnormal end, and refers to a program stopping prematurely due to a bug. It is more commonly associated with mainframe programs, as this is its origin. Another purported origin of the term is that ABEND is called "abend" because it is what system operators do to the computer late on Friday when they want to call it day, and hence is from the German word "Abend" meaning "Evening". This is untrue.
* Ada programming language — named after Ada Lovelace, who is considered by many to be the first programmer.
* Apache — the web server from the Apache Software Foundation.
Originally this name was chosen by an author just because it was a catchy name. Soon enough, it was suggested that the name was indeed appropriate, because its founders got started by applying patches to code written for NCSA's httpd daemon. The result was "a patchy" server.
* awk — a computer pattern/action language, name made up of the surnames of its authors Alfred V. Aho, Peter J. Weinberger, and Brian W. Kernighan
B
* B programming language — B was created by Ken Thompson as a revision of the BCPL programming language.
* biff — a command to turn on asynchronous email notification on Unix systems. Actually named after a dog at U.C. Berkeley, who would bark when mail was delivered. (The dog belonged to Heidi Stettner, validation of this from Eric Cooper.)
* bit — Claude E. Shannon first used the word bit in a 1948 paper. Shannon's bit is a portmanteau word for binary digit (or possibly binary digit). He attributed its origin to John W. Tukey. See [1].
* Bon programming language — Bon was created by Ken Thompson and named after his wife Bonnie. However according to an encyclopedia quotation in Bon's manual, it was named after a religion (likely Tibetan) whose rituals involve the murmuring of magic formulas. [2]
* booting or bootstrapping — The term booting or bootstrapping a computer was inspired by the story of the Baron Munchhausen where he pulls himself out of a swamp by the straps on his boots.
* Bug — a fault in a computer program which prevents it from working correctly.
The term is often (but erroneously) credited to Grace Hopper. In 1946, she joined the Harvard Faculty at the Computation Laboratory where she traced an error in the Harvard Mark II to a moth trapped in a relay. This bug was carefully removed and taped to the log book. (See picture).
However, use of the word "bug" to describe defects in mechanical systems dates back to at least the 1870s, perhaps especially in Scotland. Thomas Edison, for one, used the term in his notebooks.
* byte — the term was coined by Werner Buchholz in 1956 during the early design phase for the IBM Stretch computer. It was coined by mutating the word bite so it would not be accidentally misspelled as bit. A byte is a grouping of 8 bits.
C
* C programming language — Dennis Ritchie improved on the B programming language and called it New B. He later called it C. (See also D).
* C++ — an object-oriented programming language and a successor to the C programming language.
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.
* Cookie — A packet of information that travels between a browser and the web server.
The term was coined by web browser programmer Lou Montulli after the term "magic cookies" used by Unix programmers.
D–F
* D -- Walter Bright designed D as an improved C, avoiding many of the design problems of C (eg, extensive pointer manipulation, unenforced array boundaries, ...).
* Daemon — a process in an operating system that runs in the background.
It is falsely considered an acronym for Disk And Execution MONitor. According to the original team that introduced the concept, "the use of the word daemon was inspired by the Maxwell's Daemon of physics and thermodynamics (an imaginary agent which helped sort molecules with differing velocities and worked tirelessly in the background)" thus evading the Laws of Thermodynamics. [3]. The earliest use appears to have been in the phrase "daemon of Socrates", which meant his "guiding or indwelling spirit; his genius", also a pre-Christian equivalent of the "Guardian Angel", or, alternatively, a demigod (who bears only an etymological connection to the word "demon"). The term was embraced, and possibly popularized, by the Unix operating systems which supported multiple background processes: various local (and later Internet) services were provided by daemons. This is exemplified by the BSD mascot, John Lasseter's drawing of a friendly imp (copyright Marshall Kirk McKusick). Thus, a daemon is something that works magically without anyone being much aware of it. Note that an alternative spelling is 'daemon', which is sometimes slightly differentiated in purpose from 'demon'.
* Debian — a Linux distribution, a portmanteau of project creator Ian Murdock's name and that of his girlfriend (now ex-wife) Debra.
* Emacs — a text editor, acronym for Editor MACroS
* finger — Unix command that provides information about users logged into a system
Les Earnest wrote the finger program in 1971 to solve provide users who wanted information about other users on a network or system. Prior to the finger program, the only way to get this information was with a who program that showed IDs and terminal line numbers for logged—in users; people used to run their fingers down the "who" list. Earnest named his program after this phenomenon.
* Foobar — from the U.S. Army slang acronym, FUBAR Both foo and bar are used as metasyntatic variables.
G
* Gentoo — a Linux distribution, named after a variety of penguin, the universal Linux mascot.
* GNU — a project with an original goal of creating a free operating system.
Gnu is also a species of African antelope. The founder of the GNU project Richard Stallman liked the name because of the humour associated with its pronunciation and was also influenced by the song The Gnu Song [4], by Flanders and Swann which is a song sung by a gnu. It is also an early example of a recursive acronym -- "GNU's Not Unix".
* Google — search engine on the web.
The name started as an exaggerated 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. The word was originally invented by Milton Sirotta, nephew of mathematician Edward Kasner in 1938 during a discussion of large numbers and exponential notation.
* Gopher — an early distributed document search and retrieval network protocol on the Internet
The source of the name is claimed to be three-fold: first, that it is used to "go-for" information; second, that it does so through a menu of links analogous to gopher holes; and third, that the mascot of the protocol authors' organization, the University of Minnesota, is Goldy the Gopher.
* grep — a Unix command line utility
The name comes from a command in the Unix text editor ed that takes the form g/re/p meaning search globally for a regular expression and print lines where instances are found. "Grep" like "Google" is often used as a verb, meaning "to search".
H–K
* Hotmail — free email service, now part of MSN.
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.
* i18n — short for internationalization.
"18" is for the number of letters between the i and the n. The term l10n (for localization) has failed to catch on to the same degree, but is used by some.
* ICQ — an instant messaging service.
ICQ is not an acronym. It is a play on the phrase "I seek you" (similar to CQ in ham radio usage).
* ID10T - pronounced "ID ten T" - is a code frequently used by a customer service representative (CSR) to annotate their notes and identify the source of a problem as the person who is reporting the problem rather than the system being blamed. This is a thinly veiled reference to the CSR's opinion that the person reporting the problem is an IDIOT. Example: Problem reported caused by ID10T, no resolution possible. See also PEBKAC.
* Jakarta Project — a project constituted by Sun and Apache to create a web server for Java servlets and JSPs.
Jakarta was the name of the conference room at Sun where most of the meetings between Sun and Apache took place. The conference room was most likely named after Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia, which is located on the northwest coast of the island of Java.
* Java — programming language
Originally called "D", but with the connotation of a near-failing mark on a report card the language was renamed 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 name as there was already another programming language called Oak. "Java" was selected from a list of suggestions, primarily because it is a popular slang term for coffee, especially that grown on the island of Java. As the programmers drank a lot of coffee, this seemed an appropriate name. Many people mistakenly think that Java is indeed an acronym and spell it JAVA. When one of the original Java programmers from Sun was asked to define JAVA he said it stood for nothing, but if it must stand for something: "Just Another Vague Acronym."
* JavaScript — programming language (is NOT Java)
JavaScript was originally developed by Brendan Eich of Netscape under the name Mocha, which was later renamed to LiveScript, and finally to JavaScript.[1] The change of name from LiveScript to JavaScript roughly coincided with Netscape adding support for Java technology in its Netscape Navigator web browser. JavaScript was first introduced and deployed in the Netscape browser version 2.0B3 in December 1995. The naming has caused confusion, giving the impression that the language is a spin-off of Java, and it has been characterized by many as a marketing ploy by Netscape to give JavaScript the cachet of what was then the hot new web-programming language.[2][3]
* Job
* Kerberos — a computer network authentication protocol that is used by both Windows 2000 and Windows XP as their default authentication method.
When created by programmers at MIT in the 1970s, they wanted a name that suggested high security for the project, so they named it after the Greek mythology character kerberos, (also spelled Cerberus), the mythical three-headed canine guarding Hades' gates. The reference to Greek mythology is most likely because Kerberos was developed as part of Project Athena.
L
* Linux — an operating system kernel, and the common name for the operating system which uses it.
Linux creator Linus Torvalds originally used the Minix operating system on his computer, didn't like it, liked MS-DOS less, and started a project to develop an operating system that would address the problems of Minix. Hence the working name was Linux (Linus' Minix). Originally, however, Linus had planned to have it named 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.
* Lisa — A personal computer designed at Apple Computer during the early 1980s.
Apple stated that LISA was an acronym for Local Integrated Software Architecture; however, it is often inferred that the machine was originally named after the daughter of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, and that this acronym was invented later to fit the name. Accordingly, two humorous suggestions for expanding the acronym included Let's Invent Some Acronym and Let's Invent Silly Acronyms.
* Liveware - a term meaning computer personnel. It plays on the terms software and hardware. Coined in 1966, the word indicates that sometimes the computer problem is not with the computer itself, but with the user.
* Lotus Software — Lotus founder Mitch Kapor got the name for his company from 'The Lotus Position' ('Padmasana' in Sanskrit). Kapor used to be a teacher of Transcendental Meditation technique as taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
M
* Apple Macintosh, Mac — computer system from Apple Computer.
from McIntosh, a popular type of apple. Jef Raskin, a computer scientist, is credited with this naming.
* Mac OS — The operating system used in the Macintosh computer system.
from "Mac", a shortened form of Macintosh and a commonly used name for the Macintosh computer system (see elsewhere on this page), and "OS", the common abbreviation for "operating system".
* Memoization — the process of automatically modifying functions to include caching behavior.
Coined by Donald Michie in his 1968 paper Memo Functions and Machine Learning.
* Mozilla — a web browser and successor to Netscape Communicator.
When Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape, created a browser to replace the Mosaic browser, it was internally named Mozilla (Mosaic-Killer, Godzilla). When Netscape's Navigator source code was made open source, Mozilla was the internal name for the open source version.
