Lambda the Ultimate

The link says these are named after the Shakespearean characters. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I always thought they were more directly named after two moons of Uranus. After all, they come from different plays (admittedly the same playwright) but orbit the same planet.

How about Lua?

The link says "Lua" is Portuguese for moon. Is this more evidence for my argument above? :)

There seems to be a moon tradition, like the "materials" one that is mentioned on the Nickle site.

Maybe I should change my (non-existent) language's name from Arrow to Ariel? :)

How about Lua? The link says "Lua" is Portuguese for moon.

Maybe I should change my (non-existent) language's name from Arrow to Ariel? :)

In order not to make this a complete waste of space, I will tell you a story.

A topologist walks into a bar and orders a drink. The bartender, being a number theorist, says, "I'm sorry, but we don't serve topologists here."

The disgruntled topologist walks outside, but then gets an idea and performs Dahn surgery upon herself. She walks into the bar, and the bartender, who does not recognize her since she is now a different manifold, serves her a drink. However, the bartender thinks she looks familiar, or at least locally similar, and asks, "Aren't you that topologist that just came in here?"

To which she responds, "No, I'm a frayed knot."

There's also apparently a language called Proteus, which is one of Neptune's moons.

Algol (a star) also comes to mind.

Oh, and of course there's that big thing in the sky, Solaris. :)

(I have a daughter named Miranda, incidentally. I tell people who get the joke that she was named after a programming language.)

I've heard a rumour that the Miranda-offshoot language Orwell was so named because someone didn't know who wrote the book Brave New World, and by the time they realised the mistake, it was too late. Can anyone confirm this?

Also, I believe that Mercury was not named after the planet as such (the group found about 20 meanings for the word "mercury" at last count), but rather was meant to conjure the image of "quicksilver". Shiny and fast.

"Wirth was fascinated by the accuracy and reliability of the Voyager space probe then passing Oberon, one of the moons of Uranus. The project was christened Oberon in its honor."

Abstract- Programming in Oberon

CLEAN - A Language for Functional Graph Rewriting

(I have a daughter named Miranda, incidentally. I tell people who get the joke that she was named after a programming language.)

I have a daughter named Ruby. My wife was unaware of the programming language association at the time we chose the name. She vetoed Haskell (for a boy) with some vehemence...

No, but I hope for a dynamic daughter.

What amuses me is the anomaly of so many authors selecting single-letter names. Some of these are vaporware, and some don't quite count, but even my incomplete list already covers the English alphabet. I won't even start with Greek.

The take-home lesson is that if you're in the language business, and fancy a new one, the letters are taken. Please invent something descriptive...or at least use two letters.

1. A+
2. B
3. C
4. D
5. E
6. F
7. F-Script
8. G
9. H
10. I
11. J
12. K
13. M
14. Q (Commercial)
15. Q (Free)
16. R
17. S
18. T
19. UFO (just had to include it)
20. V (visual)
21. V (textual)
22. W
23. W (another)
24. X
25. X#
26. Y
27. Z

What would be really odd, though, is if someone named their language after a child.

Yves Caseau's family includes Laure-Hélène and Claire-Marie - his programming languages include LAURE and CLAIRE - Combining Logical Assertions Inheritance Relations and Entities, maybe he also does crossword puzzles ;-)