According to Wikipedia:

> The original name SEQUEL, which is widely regarded as a pun on QUEL, the query language of Ingres, was later changed to SQL (dropping the vowels) because "SEQUEL" was a trademark of the UK-based Hawker Siddeley Dynamics Engineering Limited company. The label SQL later became the acronym for Structured Query Language.

I heard that a long time ago as well. It's a successor to QUEL, so obviously the successor to quel is sequel.

> regarded as a pun on QUEL, the query language of Ingres

Indeed Postgres, too, is a pun on Ingres itself (post-Ingres).

There is also C#, where # represents a duplication of "++", on top of each other. Technically, the # is not the sign for the musical sharp key (♯), but "C sharp" sounds better than "C hash", "C pound" or "C octothorp". :)

Edit: On an unrelated note, TIL that the sign used on telephone keys is also not #, but ⌗ -- a.k.a. the "Viewdata square" [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viewdata#Keypad_symbols:_the_s...

I assumed they just meant to comment out everything that came after C.

Then it would be called C// or C/*

And then there's F#, which _does_ play on musical notation. But I suppose F is also for "functional".

The F there is for System-F! According to Don Syme, although I don’t personally know what System-F is. https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/12/f_6_were_making_f/

Don Syme is a pretty cool guy from what I’ve seen online too. He enjoyed supporting and attending Migrateful (UK charity where refugees/asylum seekers teach cooking classes) which I’m appreciative of in particular.

System F is a polymorphic lambda calculus, it's more theoretical than practical (typing must be explicit or type inference may be impossible) but a restriction of its typing scheme is one you may have heard of, and the Hindley-Milner type inference algorithm works for it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_F

# may not be the same glyph as musical sharp, but the language name was indeed intended to have a musical interpretation, according to the wikipedia.

> Edit: On an unrelated note, TIL that the sign used on telephone keys is also not #, but ⌗ -- a.k.a. the "Viewdata square" [0].

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_keypad#Layout

"The key labeled was officially named the "star" key. The key labeled # is officially called the "number sign" key, but other names such as "pound", "hash", "hex", "octothorpe", "gate", "lattice", and "square", are common, depending on national or personal preference. The Greek symbols alpha and omega had been planned originally."

I'm now imagining an alternate world where Twitter/X introduced us to alphatags or omegatags.

Twitter borrowed the # convention from IRC channel names, not telephone keypads.

I suppose it's quite widely known where "JavaScript" comes from, but seeing it next to all the others and how they were named on the list, it seems like the... saddest etymology of them all.

Fitting, in my opinion.

Scheme: Gerald J. Sussman and Guy L. Steele were working on a followup to Conniver, which they called Schemer, but but the machine they were working with only allowed 6-character names.

I'm obliged to point out that C has the same value as C++.

There is in fact a higher valued ++C language: https://esolangs.org/wiki/%2B%2BC

Fitting with the whole point of C++ where the original design philosophy was to provide language features that you wouldn't have to pay for (in performance cost) if you didn't use them.

It makes C larger, but returns the same value.

Perl: Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister

(it's actually a reference to the Parable of the Pearl, but that name clashed with PEARL, a real-time programming language from the 70s developed in Germany)

Practical Extraction and Reporting Language

> D: a successor to C

As expressed in Haskell: 'D' == succ 'C'

As another example: "IBM" == map succ "HAL"

"WNT" == map succ "VMS"

I think that list is limited to languages whose name comes from real life entities, and optionally with an interesting story behind. Names like "SQL" or "C" are more like pure knowledge rather nice good gossip.

Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code

Swift named after the Swift bird?

no, it's named after Taylor.

I thought that name for Caml was a backronym. I thought it was for "Cambridge ML".

That would be odd, given that it was developed in France.

Yeah that would be pretty odd, I suppose I was mistaken then.

Lua: Portuguese for "moon", it was developed in Brazil as a successor to SOL (Simple Object Language) which also means "sun" in Portuguese.

Didn't know that, thanks! Makes me like it more, for some reason.

There also is C--. C-- is a reduced kind of C to make implementation of compilers and interpreters for it easier. It is overall meant as a simple generation target for compilers.

Then there's the famous list of joke languages which includes C-, named after the grade its creator got in his compilers class. :-)

The Programming Language With No Pronouncable Acronym. Abreviated as INTERCAL, for obvious reasons.

PLWNPA seems like it could be pronounced "ploompa" or something.

This is also the reason behind the name XKCD

Common Business Oriented Language = COBOL

Beginners All Purpose Symbolic Instructional Code = BASIC

Clojure: closure [0] + Java

[0]: To finally find closure with the old Lisps /jk Closure in Lisp has as different meaning. It's arguments that are waiting for their lambda.

Wolfram: Named after Stephen Wolfram, by Stephen Wolfram

Does anyone else think it's a bit too much to name something after yourself? Even in math and physics, scientists often don't name it after themselves—their colleagues do it to give credit where it's due (e.g., Colomb's law, Planck's constant, etc.)

Wolfram's ego is the size of at least two dozen Carl Sagan egos.

That reminds me of https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Edsger_W._Dijkstra#nano-D...

D was originally the 'Digital Mars Compiler'.

Everyone around Walter Bright kept calling it D because it was a modern language with C-like syntax. Thus, D the next letter in the alphabet and eventually Walter gave in. :)

> C++: increments over C.

Or, as UNIX haters put it: C++ is to C what lung cancer is to lung.