This is a list of the origins of computer-related terms or terms used in the computing world (i.e., a list of computer term etymologies). 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., a compiler is an application that compiles (programming language source code into the computer's machine language). However, there are other terms with less obvious origins, which are of etymological interest. This article lists such terms.
A
ABEND – originally from an IBM System/360 error message, short for "abnormal end". Jokingly reinterpreted as German Abend ("evening"), because "it is what system operators do to the machine late on Friday when they want to call it a day."
Ada – named after Ada Lovelace, who is considered by many to be the first programmer. Apache – originally chosen from respect for the Native American Indian tribe of Apache. It was suggested that the name was appropriate, as Apache began as a series of patches to code written for NCSA's HTTPd daemon. The result was "a patchy" server.
AWK – composed of the initials of its authors Aho, Weinberger, and Kernighan.
B
B – probably a contraction of "BCPL", reflecting Ken Thompson's efforts to implement a smaller BCPL in 8 KB of memory on a DEC PDP-7. Or, named after Bon.
biff – named after a dog known by the developers at Berkeley, who – according to the UNIX manual page – died on 15 August 1993, at the age of 15, and belonged to a certain Heidi Stettner. Some sources report that the dog would bark at the mail carrier, making it a natural choice for the name of a mail notification system. The Jargon File contradicts this description, but confirms at least that the dog existed.
bit – first used by Claude E. Shannon in his seminal 1948 paper "A Mathematical Theory of Communication". Shannon's "bit" is a portmanteau of "binary digit". He attributed its origin to John W. Tukey, who had used the word in a Bell Labs memo of 9 January 1947.
Bon – created by Ken Thompson and named either after his wife Bonnie, or else after "a religion whose rituals involve the murmuring of magic formulas" (a reference to the Tibetan native religion Bön). booting or bootstrapping – from the phrase "to pull oneself up by one's bootstraps", originally used as a metaphor for any self-initiating or self-sustaining process. Used in computing due to the apparent paradox that a computer must run code to load anything into memory, but code cannot be run until it is loaded. bug – 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. 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 and letters. byte – coined by Werner Buchholz in June 1956 during the early design phase for the IBM Stretch computer.
C
C – a programming language. Dennis Ritchie, having improved on the B language, named his creation New B. He later renamed it C. (See also D).
C++ – an object-oriented programming language, a successor to the C programming language. C++ creator Bjarne Stroustrup named his new language "C with Classes" and then "new C". The original language 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.
computer – from the human computers who carried out calculations mentally and possibly with mechanical aids, now replaced by electronic programmable computers. 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. The term "magic cookie" in turn derives from "fortune cookie", a cookie with an embedded message.
Cursor (user interface) - Cursor is Latin for 'runner.' A cursor is the name given to the transparent slide engraved with a hairline that is used for marking a point on a slide rule. The term was then transferred to computers through analogy.
D
D – a programming language. Designed by Walter Bright as an improved C, avoiding many of the design problems of C (e.g., extensive pointer manipulation, unenforced array boundaries, etc.).