Skip to content

TechRepublic

  • Top Products
  • AI
  • Developer
  • Payroll
  • Security
  • Project Management
  • Accounting
  • CRM
  • Academy
Resources
  • TechRepublic Premium
  • TechRepublic Academy
  • Newsletters
  • Resource Library
  • Forums
  • Sponsored
Go Premium
Popular Topics
  • Top Products
  • AI
  • Developer
  • Payroll
  • Security
  • Project Management
  • Accounting
  • CRM
  • Academy
  • Project Management
  • Innovation
  • Cheat Sheets
  • Big Data
  • Tech Jobs
View All Topics
Go Premium
Hardware

Gallery: The surprising and strange origins of 10 common tech terms

By Brandon Vigliarolo April 13, 2017, 11:11 AM PDT Brandon Vigliarolo on Twitter bviglia

Image
1
of 6

confused guy.jpg
confused guy.jpg
Gallery: The surprising and strange origins of 10 common tech terms

​What's in a name?

Image: iStock/SIphotography

​What's in a name?

“Why in the world do they call it _______?” It’s a common question asked in and out of tech circles. Strange names like Bluetooth, Google, Wiki, and others frequently cause head scratching rumination and the answers are often just as strange as the names.

You may be familiar with a few of the origin stories behind these tech terms–hopefully you’ll be pleasantly surprised with most.

Image: iStock/SIphotography
1-debug.jpg
1-debug.jpg
Gallery: The surprising and strange origins of 10 common tech terms

​Debugging

Image: NYU Polytechnic

​Debugging

Lots of people think they know where the term debugging came from–Grace Hopper discovered a moth in the Harvard Mark II that caused it to break down. While Admiral Hopper may be responsible for the popularization of the term she isn’t the one who started it–in fact it goes back decades before she taped a moth to a notebook page.

Thomas Edison even used it in a 1878 letter, though the likely origin is even older than that: The Middle English word bugge was commonly used to refer to gremlins and monsters and it has probably stuck around ever since then.

Image: NYU Polytechnic
3-wiki.jpg
3-wiki.jpg
Gallery: The surprising and strange origins of 10 common tech terms

​Wiki

Image: WikiWikiWeb

​Wiki

Wikipedia might be the most popular wiki on the web, but it isn’t the first: That honor belongs to WikiWikiWeb. It still exists as a user-editable repository, just like Wikipedia, but is geared toward programmers and code.

The term Wiki is a shortening of Wiki-Wiki, the name of the shuttle that took designer Ward Cunningham to his hotel from the Honolulu airport on a vacation. Wiki-Wiki is a Hawaiian term for very fast, which Cunningham thought was a good name for his new platform. The rest is computer history.

Image: WikiWikiWeb
7-daemon.jpg
7-daemon.jpg
Gallery: The surprising and strange origins of 10 common tech terms

​Daemon

Image: University of Pittsburgh

​Daemon

Another in a long line of tech-related “backronyms,” Daemon was not initially a shortening of Disk And Execution MONitor. It comes from MIT’s Project MAC (yet another backronym), one of the first AI research groups.

A physics thought experiment, Maxwell’s Demon, involves a demon that constantly operates invisibly, sorting molecules and theoretically violating the second law of thermodynamics.

The Daemons that exist in your computer do similar work, except they don’t violate any immutable laws of physics. Rather, they keep things running properly in the background invisibly to you, the user.

Image: University of Pittsburgh
Gallery: The surprising and strange origins of 10 common tech terms

The Mouse

The Mouse

There are a lot of “tails” surrounding the origin of the name mouse for this universal computer accessory, but if we take the word of its creator Douglas Engelbart they’re all rubbish. “I don’t know why we call it a mouse … It started that way, and we never did change it,” he said during a presentation demoing the product in 1967.

Regardless of what he says the stories continue to swirl. Other sources say Engelbart stands by his “who knows where it came from” line, but added they thought the cord looked like a mouse. Yet another version of the mouse’s origin story says it was named such because the onscreen pointer was called a CAT, though there’s no actual documentation available to support that claim.

The naming of the mouse will just have to go down as one of history’s great mysteries. Right up there with Stonehenge.

10-dongle.jpg
10-dongle.jpg
Gallery: The surprising and strange origins of 10 common tech terms

​Dongle

Image: Byte Magazine/Archive.org

​Dongle

Who hasn’t wondered where the word dongle came from? No one quite knows, though there are some good theories. The OED says dongle was probably just an arbitrary made-up term–not the most satisfactory explanation.

Another reasonable explanation is that it’s a corruption of the word dangle. Plenty of dongles dangle, which makes this one more credible than the urban legend that dongles were named for their creator, Don Gall (check out page 149 of that linked PDF for a vintage ad and the likely origin.)

There are a number of possible reasons, all of them a combination of absurd, delightful, and somewhat plausible.

Image: Byte Magazine/Archive.org
  • Hardware
  • Software
  • Tech Industry
  • Account Information

    Share with Your Friends

    Gallery: The surprising and strange origins of 10 common tech terms

    Your email has been sent

Share: Gallery: The surprising and strange origins of 10 common tech terms
Image of Brandon Vigliarolo
By Brandon Vigliarolo
Brandon is a Staff Writer for TechRepublic. He's an award-winning feature and how-to writer who previously worked as an IT professional and served as an MP in the US Army.
  • Account Information

    Contact Brandon Vigliarolo

    Your message has been sent

  • |
  • See all of Brandon's content

Daily Tech Insider

If you can only read one tech story a day, this is it.

TechRepublic TechRepublic
  • TechRepublic on Facebook
  • TechRepublic on X
  • TechRepublic on LinkedIn
  • TechRepublic on YouTube
  • TechRepublic on Pinterest
  • TechRepublic RSS
Services
  • About Us
  • Newsletters
  • RSS Feeds
  • Site Map
  • Site Help & Feedback
  • FAQ
  • Advertise
  • Do Not Sell My Information
  • Careers
Explore
  • Downloads
  • TechRepublic Forums
  • Meet the Team
  • TechRepublic Academy
  • TechRepublic Premium
  • Resource Library
  • Photos
  • Videos
  • Editorial Policy
  • Legal Terms
  • Privacy Policy
© 2025 TechnologyAdvice. All rights reserved.
CLOSE

Create a TechRepublic Account

Get the web's best business technology news, tutorials, reviews, trends, and analysis—in your inbox. Let's start with the basics.

Already registered? Sign In
Use Facebook
Use Linkedin

* - indicates required fields

CLOSE

Sign in to TechRepublic

Not a member? Create an account
Use Facebook
Use Linkedin

Lost your password? Request a new password

CLOSE

Reset Password

Please enter your email adress. You will receive an email message with instructions on how to reset your password.

Check your email for a password reset link. If you didn't receive an email don't forgot to check your spam folder, otherwise contact support.

Back to login
1 Finish Profile
2 Newsletter Preferences
CLOSE

Welcome. Tell us a little bit about you.

This will help us provide you with customized content.

No thanks, continue without
1 Finish Profile
2 Newsletter Preferences
CLOSE

Want to receive more TechRepublic news?

Newsletter Name
Subscribe
Daily Tech Insider
Daily Tech Insider AU
TechRepublic UK
TechRepublic News and Special Offers
TechRepublic News and Special Offers International
Executive Briefing
Innovation Insider
Project Management Insider
Microsoft Weekly
Cloud Insider
Data Insider
Developer Insider
TechRepublic Premium
Apple Weekly
Cybersecurity Insider
Google Weekly
Toggle All
No thanks, continue without

You're All Set

Thanks for signing up! Keep an eye out for a confirmation email from our team. To ensure any newsletters you subscribed to hit your inbox, make sure to add [email protected] to your contacts list.

Back to Home Page
×