Recursive acronym

A recursive acronym is an acronym that refers to itself. The term was first used in print in 1979 in Douglas Hofstadter's book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, in which Hofstadter invents the acronym GOD, meaning "GOD Over Djinn", to help explain infinite series, and describes it as a recursive acronym. [1] Other references followed, [2] however the concept was used as early as 1968 in John Brunner's science fiction novel Stand On Zanzibar. In the story, the acronym EPT (Education for Particular Task) later morphed into "Eptification for Particular Task".

Computer-related examples

In computing, an early tradition in the hacker community (especially at MIT) was to choose acronyms and abbreviations that referred humorously to themselves or to other abbreviations. Perhaps the earliest example in this context, from about 1977 or 1978, is TINT ("TINT Is Not TECO"), an editor for MagicSix written (and named) by Ted Anderson. This inspired the two MIT Lisp Machine editors called EINE ("EINE Is Not Emacs") and ZWEI ("ZWEI Was EINE Initially"). These were followed by Richard Stallman's GNU (GNU's Not Unix). Many others also include negatives, such as denials that the thing defined is or resembles something else (which the thing defined does in fact resemble or is even derived from), to indicate that, despite the similarities, it was distinct from the program on which it was based.[3]

An earlier example appears in a 1976 textbook on data structures, in which the pseudo-language SPARKS is used to define the algorithms discussed in the text. "SPARKS" is claimed to be a non-acronymic name, but "several cute ideas have been suggested" as expansions of the name. One of the suggestions is "Smart Programmers Are Required to Know SPARKS".[4] (this example is tail recursive)

Notable examples

Mutually recursive or otherwise special

Organizations

Some organizations have been named or renamed in this way:

In popular culture

See also

References

Notes

  1. "Puzzles and Paradoxes: Infinity in Finite Terms". Retrieved 2013-04-23.
  2. "WordSpy – Recursive Acronym". Retrieved 2008-12-18.
  3. The Free Software Movement and the Future of Freedom: The name "GNU", Richard Stallman, March 9th 2006
  4. Fundamentals Of Data Structures (Ellis Horowitz & Sartaj Sahni, Computer Science Press, 1976)
  5. Stenberg, Daniel (20 March 2015). "curl, 17 years old today". daniel.haxx.se. Retrieved 20 March 2015.
  6. "HIME Input Method Editor". Retrieved 2012-06-15.
  7. "About LAME". Retrieved 2016-02-20.
  8. "MEGA". Retrieved 19 January 2013.
  9. "The Jargon File: Mung". Retrieved 2007-10-15.
  10. "pacc: a compiler-compiler". Retrieved 2012-05-14.
  11. "History of PHP". php.net.
  12. "What Pine Really Stands For". Retrieved 2007-03-06.
  13. QINS website
  14. .EXE magazine, November 1996
  15. "FAQ – The Official Wine Wiki". Retrieved 2009-01-16.
  16. FAQ for JINI-USERS Mailing List, Retrieved 18 November 2013
  17. Introduction to The Jini Specification, Arnold et al, Pearson, 1999, ISBN 0201616343
  18. "FALE Association of Locksport Enthusiasts". Retrieved 2014-02-12.
  19. FALE Association of Locksport Enthusiasts. Retrieved 2014-02-12.

Sources

External links

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