E T Y M O L O G I C A L
 
                                L E X I C O N

                                            ACRONYMS

The hypothalamus of the brain controls the "Four F's":  1.Fighting;  2.Fleeing;  3.Feeding; and  4.Mating.
--> Psychology professor in neuropsychology intro course.

It is said that the Limbic system of the brain controls the Four F's: Feeding, Fighting, Fleeing, and Reproduction.
--> ?

                          "PROFOUND" ACRONYMS

Niels Bjorn-Andersen and his collagues of the information systems research group at the Copenhagen School of Economics have named their latest joint computerisation project with the trade unions DAPHNE. 
The name is an acronym in Danish, but it has a much more profound significance. You may recall that in Greek mythology Daphne was a nymph, the daughter of the river Peneius. She was the enbodiment of what we would nowdays refer to as the historically determined "female" characteristics, such as intuition, subjectivity, tenacity and compassion. 
She was pursued by Apollo, the embodiment of the so-called male characteristics: logic, analysis, rationality, objectivity. Indeed, one might say, the god of computerisation. 
When he failed to win Daphne's favours, Apollo applied the male logic of "might is right" and decided to take her by force. As he was about to rape her, she called on the venerable gaea to help her. Immediately, the earth opened, Daphne disappeared, and in her place a laurel tree sprang from the ground.
Believing that male values have raped science and technology for long enough, Bjorn-Andersen pointed out that "it was natural for us to choose the name Daphne".
--> Mike Cooley, Architect or Bee? The Hogarth Press. London 1987, p. 87 

                                          ETYMOLOGIES           

Etymology, n.:
Some early etymological scholars came up with derivations that were hard for the public to believe.  The term "etymology" was formed from the Latin "etus" ("eaten"), the root "mal" ("bad"), and "logy" ("study of").  It meant "the study of things that are hard to swallow."
--> Mike Kellen

****************************************************

                          General

                                Acronyms
                 of Commercial Mac Languages 

A lot of fellows nowadays have a B.A., M.D., or Ph.D. Unfortunately, they don't have a J.O.B. 
--> "Fats" Domino 

(MW) CW = (MetroWerks) CodeWarrior
HC = HyperCard
MCL = Macintosh Common Lisp
MPW (C)  = Macintosh Programmer's Workshop  (C) 
SPM = Symantec's Project Manager
TC = Think C

                                 e-mailed question

I sent [e-mails from Greece],             
I told them, This is what I wish :
--> Lewis Carroll: [a letter to fish]
===========================================================
> Which is the etymology of the language name: xxxxx
===========================================================

                             A - H

                                                 A 

     --> Greek (Cretan; from Anopolis) paretymological proverb.

AAAAAA = American Association Against Acronym Abuse Anonymous.
--> ?

                                               ABC
From: Steven.Pemberton@cwi.nl

It was chosen as a name that suggested simplicity, and as unlikely to have been trademarked by anyone else.

Best wishes,

Steven Pemberton, CWI, Amsterdam; Steven.Pemberton@cwi.nl
abc-list keeper
http://www.cwi.nl/~steven/

                                               Ada
Ada: named after the mathematician Augusta Ada Lovelace.

"The Ada programming language was originally christened "DoD-1" by the general press.  DoD's High Order Language Working Group (HOLWG), however, never accepted that name, fearing its military overtones might prejudice nonmilitary users against it.
In 1979, Jack Cooper of the Navy Materiel Command thought of naming the language "Ada", which was widely accepted by the HOLWG.  The name honors Countess Augusta Ada Lovelace, a mathematician and the only legitimate daughter of poet Lord Byron.  While in her twenties, she worked with Charles Babbage on his Difference Engine and thus is considered the world's first computer programmer."
ftp://sw-eng.falls-church.va.us/public/AdaIC/pol-hist/history/lady-lov.txt
ftp://ajpo.sei.cmu.edu/public/AdaIC/pol-hist/history/lady-lov.txt

"The language's name, Ada, was chosen and named for the mathematician Lady Augusta Ada Byron (1815-1852), Countess of Lovelace and daughter of the poet Lord Byron. She worked with Charles Babbage, who had created a "difference engine" that could be "programmed" much like the Jacquard loom."
ftp://sw-eng.falls-church.va.us/public/AdaIC/pol-hist/history/histada.txt
ftp://ajpo.sei.cmu.edu/public/AdaIC/pol-hist/history/histada.txt

"Today, on behalf of her great work in mathematics, a military programming language, Ada, is named after her."
http://www.scottlan.edu/lriddle/women/love.htm

                                             Ada/Ed
Ada/Ed
<language, education> An interpreter, editor and run-time
environment for Ada, intended as a teaching tool.
http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/?Ada/Ed

                                               AdvSys
ADVSYS - An Adventure Writing System

                                                  AGT
AGT = Adventure Game Toolkit 

                                                 ALAN
ALAN = Adventure LANguage System

                                                Alpha

Alpha: the first letter of the greek alphabet.

                                                   APL
APL = A Programming Language 
Book: 
Kenneth E. Iverson, A Programming Language,Wiley,1962

                                                AWK
AWK =  Aho, Weinberger, Kernigham 
Book:
Alfred V. Aho, Brian W Kernighan, Peter J Weinberger:
The Awk Programming Language. Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. 1988  (ISBN 0-201-07981-X)

                                                 B

                                           Babylon
From: Juergen.Walther@gmdzi.gmd.de 

Its a somewhat ironic reminder to the ancient babylonean language problem ("Babylonische Sprachverwirrung") used to characterize the approach in BABYLON to integrate different languages (paradigms) using the meta-interpreter architecture.

greetings Juergen

                                              BASIC
BASIC = Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code

                                              BBEdit
BBEdit = Bare Bones Edit 

                                                BBC
BBC = British Broadcasting Corporation

                                               Bob
Bob: named after Bob Albrecht, co-founder of Dr. Dobb's Journal ? - Ed.
(The Dr. Dobb's Journal history see at:  ftp://ftp.mv.com/pub/ddj/  in: history.txt)

                                                 C

The three worst C's: Cappadocy, Crete, and Cilicy
--> Ancient Greek proverb (Souda Lexicon)

The three worst C's: Crete, Chypre, and Cefalonia
--> Modern Greek proverb 

                                                 C
"so called because many features derived from an earlier compiler named `B' in commemoration of *its* parent, BCPL."
http://www.lysator.liu.se/hackdict/split2/c.html

"It was called "C" because many features derived from an earlier
compiler named "B" in commemoration of *its* parent, BCPL. In fact, C was briefly named "NB". Before Bjarne Stroustrup settled the question by designing C++, there was a humourous debate over
whether C's successor should be named "D" or "P" (following B and C in "BCPL")."
http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/?C

Note:
From: Jonathan.Kimmitt@camcon.co.uk (Jonathan Kimmitt)

(....)

In the derivation of C, you state it is the successor to B, which is based on  BCPL.
For some reason you omitted the derivation of BCPL which is Basic Combined  Programming Language, a successor to and simpler version of CPL (Combined Programming Language).

(....)

                                             CABRI
CABRI = CAhier BRouillon Informatique (i.e. Computerized notebook)

                                               CCL
CCL =  Connection Control Language

                                             CAML
CAML =  Categorical Abstract Machine Language

                                      Chipmunk Basic 
From: rhn@netcom.com (Ron Nicholson)

Hello,

The old pascal version was named that way by Dave Gillespie when
he was a student at Cal Tech.

- Ron Nicholson

                                            CLEAN
From: rinus@cs.kun.nl (rinus plasmeijer)

Dear Antreas,

The history is as follows:
We designed graph rewriting systems together with our friends in East-Anglia (Sleep, Kennaway, Glauert). We also had a tiny language on top of it, called LEAN (the Language of East-Anglia and Nijmegen, 1987, Parle conference).
This language could do general graph rewriting (also useful for imperative languages and logic languages). However, in Nijmegen we want to restrict ourselves to functional languages and term-graph rewriting. So, we designed a "clean" version of LEAN, called CLEAN.

Greetings,

Rinus

                                              CMT
CMT = CMU = Carnegie Mellon University MIDI Toolkit

                                            CoCoA
CoCoA is a Macintosh system for doing Computations in Commutative Algebra... (Lang. doc)

                                            COCO/R
From: moessenboeck@ssw.uni-linz.ac.at (Hanspeter Moessenboeck)

"Coco" stands for compiler compiler. The original version of Coco generated table driven parsers; Coco/R generates recursive descent parsers. That is what "R" stands for.

Best regards
H. Moessenboeck

                                                 CSL
CSL = Codemist Standard Lisp

                                                 D

                                              DOS 
DOS = Disk Operating System

                                             DYLAN 
DYLAN = DYnamic LANguage

                                                 E

                                             EdSML 
EdSML = Edinburgh SML 

                                            EMACS
EMACS = Editing MACroS

                                              ELAN 

" (...) Elan is an educational programming language for learning and teaching systematic programming."
(Lang. doc)
                                                 F

                                               FAM
From: "David G. Durand" <dgd@cs.bu.edu> (David G. Durand)

(...)

It stands for Functional Abstract Machine. I don't know if the Edinburgh people did any papers on it or not -- It seems a pretty standard Bytecode interpreter to me.

(...)

   -- David

                                           Fantasm 
From: Lightsoft <lightsoft@zedworld.demon.co.uk>
............
>Why the greek word fantasm ?
>(FANTASM = FAst [NT] ASseMbler ? )

The reason is quite simple. We have part of a 3D game called 'Fantasy'. When we transfered to the mac, we wanted an assembler that would assemble it. Hence the fantasy-assembler, or fant-asm. Hence Fantasm was born.

What does fantasm mean in greek, then? (Nothing rude one hopes!)

Regards

Rob Probin for Lightsoft.

                                             Flex
FLEX = Fast LEXical analyzer generator   
           Faster LEX     
           Fast LEXer  

                                              FOCL
From: Michael Pazzani <pazzani@super-pan.ICS.UCI.EDU>

First Order Combined Learner.

                                              Forth
FORTH = FOuRTH  
"FORTH was first used to guide the telescope at NRAO, Kitt Peak. FORTH's inventor considered it to be a fourth-generation language but his operating system wouldn't let him use six letters in a program name, so FOURTH became FORTH. "
http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/?forth

                                             FORTRAN
FORTRAN = FORmula TRANslator

                                                 G

                                          GAL - GEM

"GAL-GEM is a complete machine emulator for the GAL (Generic Assembly Language) and GEM (GEneric Machine) computation models, as described in “Computer organization: a top down approach” by Greg W. Scragg."
(Lang. doc)

                                          Gambit

From: Marc Feeley <feeley@IRO.UMontreal.CA>

First of all please excuse me for waiting so long to reply.  I have
been away for most of the summer and have been overloaded since the start of the new semester...  Here is the information you requested:
The work on Gambit started in fall of 1987 at Brandeis University
(Boston).  The first compiler, which was called SIS (Straightforward Implementation of Scheme), was the term project of the graduate logic programming course.  The compiler was written in Prolog and generated 680x0 machine code for SUN-3 computers.  The runtime system was fairly minimal and there was no garbage-collector, interpreter, or support for continuations and floating point numbers.  A translation of this
compiler to Scheme was finished during the summer of 1988.  My main reason for working on the compiler was to give me a tool for my PhD research on parallel Lisp.  I started calling the compiler "Gambit" in 1989 when preparing the first paper on the compiler for the 1990 Lisp and Functional Programming conference.  This name was chosen for two reasons.  First of all I thought it was a cute idea to have a name that ends with "bit" because a compiler's back end produces bits.  Two of the most well known Scheme compilers in 1989 were "Rabbit" and "Orbit", so I wanted to continue the trend (the trend has seemingly continued: "Twobit", "Hobbit", and "Tidbit").  The second reason was that I had no guarantee that the effort I was putting in Gambit was going to pan out for my PhD.  The definitions of the word gambit in the Webster dictionary all seemed to apply well to the compiler:
gambit:
    1) a chess opening in which a player risks one or more minor pieces to gain an advantage in position,
    2a) a remark intended to start a conversation or make a telling point,
    2b) a calculated move.

The first publicly available version of Gambit (version 1.2.1) was
made available by anonymous FTP in january 1990.  This version only ran on 680x0 based Unix workstations (including the BBN GP1000 parallel computer).  A Macintosh port of Gambit (MacGambit) became available in january 1991.  The latest addition is the Gambit-C version of Gambit, released in december 1994, which is based on a back end that generates portable C code, thus making the whole system easy to port to any machine with a decent C compiler.

                                              GAP
GAP = Groups, Algorithms and Programming

                                              GAWK
GAWK = GNU = GNU'S NOT UNIX AWK 

                                               GCC
GCC = GNU C Compiler

                                              GLisp
GLisp = Generalized Lisp

                                             Glyphic
From: markl@glyphic.com (Mark Lentczner)

>why  did you choose (nice choice !) the greek word GLYPHIC to name your Script language?

We didn't know it was a Greek word, only of Greek origin.  Languages are written with glyphs, - so since a scripting system is the actual medium in which you write a language for a computer, Glyphic seemed appropriate.  In the same vein, Hieroglyphics are another way of writing language, and Glyphic is a simplication of that word.

What does Glyphic mean in greek?

- Mark
Mark Lentczner
markl@glyphic.com
http://www.glyphic.com/

                                              GOFER 
"Please note the spelling, derived from the notion that functional languages are GO(od) F(or) E(quational) R(easoning). This is not to be confused with `Gopher', the widely used Internet distributed information delivery system!"
http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/Department/Staff/mpj/faq.html#Gofer

                                         GW-Ada/Ed
GW-Ada/Ed = The George Washington University Ada/Ed 

                                                 H
               
                                           Harvest C
Harvest: "... the time has come, for the harvest of the earth is ripe." [ this quotation is from the lang. "About . . . "  box ]

                                             Haskell
Haskell: named after the logician Haskell B. Curry

                                               HELP
HELP = Help Est un Lisp Paresseux

                                               Hope
                                            *******
From: David Lillie <David.Lillie@insignia.co.uk>

Hi Antreas,

The Hope language was originally developed at Edinburgh University in the early 1980's (and possibly late 70's) and is named for the view from the Department of Computer Science, which overlooks Hope Square.
I have no idea how Hope Square came by its name!

 Dave Lillie
 dlillie@isltd.insignia.com

                                            *******

From: Ross Paterson <rap@doc.ic.ac.uk>

It's named after Hope Park Square, the address of the cs department in Edinburgh where it was first developed.

Ross