Techie Baby Names: Do they compute?
In a recent issue of PCWorld magazine, JR Raphael wrote an interesting and amusing article highlighting ten tech-inspired baby names. He was kind enough to give us permission to use some of his examples and add more of our own—names that might provide some extra inspiration to some techie parents out there without sounding as weird as, say, Audio Science. So no, we’re not suggesting dot.com or Tweet or even Apple.
Conveniently for us, many computer programming languages were given people names, including those in this list of techie baby names with no ID following the name.
GIRLS
Ada—computer programming language, probably named in honor of Ada Lovelace, (born Augusta Ada, daughter of Lord Byron), considered to be the first programmer.
Agnes—a computer in the original Twilight Zone TV series
Claris—a company producing Apple software
Dora—a starship computer in Robert Heinlein’s Time Enough for Love
Grace—Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper was a pioneering computer scientist whose work led to the development of one of the first modern programming languages.
Jaina
Lisa—the first personal computer with a graphical interface, 1983, made by Apple, and the name of Steve Jobs’s daughter, born that year
Lotus—a software corporation associated with IBM
Lucy—computer in Hackers
Minerva—a starship computer in Robert Heinlein’s Time Enough for Love
Pixel
BOYS
Alef—computer programming language (wonder if Natalie Portman knows about this)
Alfie—shipboard computer in Barbarella
Apollo—company that unveiled the first work station in 1981
Archie— name of the first internet search engine
Cray—Seymour Cray designed the first supercomputer
Darwin—an Apple computer operating system
Gabriel—an AI computer in James Rollins’s novel Deep Fathom
HAL—the computer in the novel and film 2001: A Space Odyssey
Jarvis—acronym for Just a Rather Very Intelligent System in Iron Man
Jensen—a brand of computer
Joshua—a subprogram in WarGames
Macintosh
Osborne—Adam Osborne made the first true portable computer in 1981
Pascal—computer language honoring Blaise Pascal who, among other things, invented the first workable automatic calculator
Ziggy—a hybrid computer from Quantum Leap
There are lots more examples of tech-related names in comics, graphic novels and computer and video games, but we’ll leave it at this for now–unless you want to add some more ideas of your own.