Recently I attended an in-house session on “Eclipse tooling”. In that, the presenter shared an interesting information about the reason behind naming Eclipse as “Eclipse”. The history goes something like this:
Sun develops Java, Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT), Swing technologies => IBM wants to develop a extensible Java IDE/platform out of VisualAge => IBM evaluates both AWT and Swing for the new IDE’s UI => unsatisfied with both, IBM mixes both frameworks and develop Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) => Sun has it’s own Java IDE, Netbeans, based on Swing => IBM open-sources the new IDE’s codebase and forms a foundation => Sun’s not joining the foundation => The new IDE project is named as Eclipse, meaning “shadowing the Sun”.
Pretty interesting, huh! 
It’s a common game in team outings to ask about the meaning of person’s name. It looks like the same game could be extended to the software products as well.
And I would be really interested to know the reasons behind the names Python, Perl, SmallTalk, C etc. Any takers?
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Java : A type of coffee.
yup! and initially it was “Oak” because Gosling was looking at the Oak tree outside his office and he got the name for the new language.
Hey thats pretty interesting!!
But for the names behind, I’m quite unaware of them!
Brilliant one!!
so, what’s the reason behind *your* name? You must be aware of it, I guess!
Nice information about Eclipse. Thank buddy!
welcome to my blog, keeran!
Good information. Great.
well that was gud one but still wats the reason behind naming it as java
May be Gosling would have been drinking a coffee while thinking of a name to the new language..