A recursive acronym is an
acronym
An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...
that
refers to itself, and appears most frequently in computer programming. The term was first used in print in 1979 in
Douglas Hofstadter
Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born February 15, 1945) is an American scholar of cognitive science, physics, and comparative literature whose research includes concepts such as the sense of self in relation to the external world, consciousness, a ...
'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. Other references followed, however the concept was used as early as 1968 in
John Brunner John Brunner may refer to:
* Sir John Brunner, 1st Baronet (1842–1919), British industrialist and Liberal Member of Parliament
* John L. Brunner (1929–1980), Pennsylvania politician
* Sir John Brunner, 2nd Baronet (1865–1929), British Libera ...
's science fiction novel ''
Stand on Zanzibar''. In the story, the acronym EPT (Education for Particular Task) later morphed into "Eptification for Particular Task".
Recursive acronyms typically form
backwardly: either an existing ordinary acronym is given a new explanation of what the letters stand for, or a name is turned into an acronym by giving the letters an explanation of what they stand for, in each case with the first letter standing recursively for the whole acronym.
Use in computing
In
computing
Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, ...
, 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 is the
backronym
A backronym is an acronym formed from an already existing word by expanding its letters into the words of a phrase. Backronyms may be invented with either serious or humorous intent, or they may be a type of false etymology or folk etymology. The ...
"Mash Until No Good", which was created in 1960 to describe
Mung, and revised to "Mung Until No Good". It lived on as a recursive command in the editing language
TECO.
">/sup> In 1977[Electronic message to BUG-LISPM, Daniel Weinreb, 8 August 1977] programmer Ted Anderson coined TINT ("TINT Is Not TECO"), an editor for MagicSix. This inspired the two MIT Lisp Machine editors called EINE ("EINE Is Not Emacs
Emacs , originally named EMACS (an acronym for "Editor MACroS"), is a family of text editors that are characterized by their extensibility. The manual for the most widely used variant, GNU Emacs, describes it as "the extensible, customizable, ...
", German for ''one'') and ZWEI ("ZWEI Was EINE Initially", German for ''two''), in turn inspiring Anderson's retort SINE ("SINE is not EINE"). Richard Stallman
Richard Matthew Stallman (; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to ...
followed with GNU (GNU's Not Unix
Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, ...
).
Recursive acronym examples often 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.
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". (this example is tail recursive)
Examples
* Allegro
Allegro may refer to:
Common meanings
* Allegro (music), a tempo marking indicate to play fast, quickly and bright
* Allegro (ballet), brisk and lively movement
Artistic works
* L'Allegro (1645), a poem by John Milton
* ''Allegro'' (Satie), an ...
: Allegro Low LEvel Game ROutines (early versions for Atari ST were called "Atari Low Level Game Routines")
* AROS Aros may refer to:
*Aros (Middle-earth), a river in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium
* Aros, Mull, the location of Aros Castle, a ruined 13th-century castle on the Isle of Mull, Scotland
*AROS Research Operating System, a free software i ...
: AROS Research Operating System (originally Amiga Research Operating System)
* ATI
Ati or ATI may refer to:
* Ati people, a Negrito ethnic group in the Philippines
**Ati language (Philippines), the language spoken by this people group
** Ati-Atihan festival, an annual celebration held in the Philippines
*Ati language (China), a ...
: ATI Technologies Inc.
* BIRD
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...
: BIRD Internet Routing Daemon
* CAVE
A cave or cavern is a natural void in the ground, specifically a space large enough for a human to enter. Caves often form by the weathering of rock and often extend deep underground. The word ''cave'' can refer to smaller openings such as sea ...
: CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment
* cURL
cURL (pronounced like "curl", UK: , US: ) is a computer software project providing a library (libcurl) and command-line tool (curl) for transferring data using various network protocols. The name stands for "Client URL".
History
cURL was ...
: Curl URL Request Library
* Darcs
Darcs is a distributed version control system created by David Roundy. Key features include the ability to choose which changes to accept from other repositories, interaction with either other local (on-disk) repositories or remote repositories v ...
: Darcs Advanced Revision Control System
* EINE: EINE Is Not Emacs
* FIJI
Fiji ( , ,; fj, Viti, ; Fiji Hindi: फ़िजी, ''Fijī''), officially the Republic of Fiji, is an island country in Melanesia, part of Oceania in the South Pacific Ocean. It lies about north-northeast of New Zealand. Fiji consis ...
: FIJI Is Just ImageJ
ImageJ is a Java-based image processing program developed at the National Institutes of Health and the Laboratory for Optical and Computational Instrumentation (LOCI, University of Wisconsin). Its first version, ImageJ 1.x, is developed in the p ...
* GiNaC
GiNaC is a free computer algebra system released under the GNU General Public License. The name is a recursive acronym for "GiNaC is Not a CAS" (Computer Algebra System). This is similar to the GNU acronym "GNU is not Unix".
What distinguishe ...
: GiNaC is Not a CAS (Computer Algebra System)
* GNU: GNU's Not Unix
* GPE: GPE Palmtop Environment
* gRPC: grpc Remote Procedure Calls
* HEEM: HEEM Everyone Even Myself
* LAME: LAME Ain't an MP3 Encoder
* LiVES: LiVES is a Video Editing System
* MINT
MiNT is Now TOS (MiNT) is a free software alternative operating system kernel for the Atari ST system and its successors. It is a multi-tasking alternative to TOS and MagiC. Together with the free system components fVDI device drivers, XaAE ...
: MINT Is Not TRAC
Trac is an open-source, web-based project management and bug tracking system. It has been adopted by a variety of organizations for use as a bug tracking system for both free and open-source software and proprietary projects and products. Tr ...
* MiNT
MiNT is Now TOS (MiNT) is a free software alternative operating system kernel for the Atari ST system and its successors. It is a multi-tasking alternative to TOS and MagiC. Together with the free system components fVDI device drivers, XaAE ...
: MiNT is Not TOS (later changed to "MiNT is Now TOS")
* Mung: Mung Until No Good
* Nano: Nano's Another editor
* Nagios
Nagios Core , formerly known as Nagios, is a free and open-source computer-software application that monitors systems, networks and infrastructure. Nagios offers monitoring and alerting services for servers, switches, applications and services ...
: Nagios Ain't Gonna Insist On Sainthood (a reference to the previous name of Nagios, "Netsaint"; ''agios'' �γιοςis the Greek word for "saint")
* NiL: NiL Isn't Liero
* Ninja-ide
NINJA-IDE (from the recursive acronym: "Ninja-IDE Is Not Just Another IDE"), is a cross-platform integrated development environment (IDE) designed to build Python applications.
It provides tools to simplify Python software development and handles ...
: Ninja-IDE Is Not Just Another IDE
* PHP: PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor (from "Personal Home Page Tools," more frequently referenced as "PHP Tools.")
* PINE
A pine is any conifer tree or shrub in the genus ''Pinus'' () of the family (biology), family Pinaceae. ''Pinus'' is the sole genus in the subfamily Pinoideae. The World Flora Online created by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Missouri Botanic ...
: PINE Is Nearly Elm, originally; PINE now officially stands for "Pine Internet News and E-mail"
* PIP: PIP Installs Packages
* P.I.P.S.: P.I.P.S. Is POSIX on Symbian
* PNG: officially "Portable Network Graphics", but unofficially "PNG's not GIF".
* RPM: RPM Package Manager
* SPARQL: SPARQL Protocol And RDF Query Language
* TikZ: TikZ ist kein Zeichenprogramm (German; TikZ is not a drawing program)
* TiLP: TiLP is a Linking Program
* TIP: TIP isn't Pico
Pico may refer to:
Places The Moon
* Mons Pico, a lunar mountain in the northern part of the Mare Imbrium basin
Portugal
* Pico, a civil parish in the municipality of Vila Verde
* Pico da Pedra, a civil parish in the municipality of Ribe ...
* TRESOR: TRESOR Runs Encryption Securely Outside RAM
* UIRA: UIRA Isn't a Recursive Acronym
* WINE
Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from Fermentation in winemaking, fermented grapes. Yeast in winemaking, Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different ...
: WINE Is Not an Emulator (Originally, Windows Emulator)
* XAMPP
XAMPP ( or ) is a free and open-source cross-platform web server solution stack package developed by Apache Friends, consisting mainly of the Apache HTTP Server, MariaDB database, and interpreters for scripts written in the PHP and Perl pr ...
: XAMPP Apache MariaDB PHP Perl
* XINU
Xinu Is Not Unix (Xinu, a recursive acronym), is an operating system for embedded systems, originally developed by Douglas Comer for educational use at Purdue University in the 1980s. The name is both recursive, and is '' Unix'' spelled backwa ...
: XINU Is Not Unix
* XNA: XNA's Not Acronymed
* YAML
YAML ( and ) (''see '') is a human-readable data-serialization language. It is commonly used for configuration files and in applications where data is being stored or transmitted. YAML targets many of the same communications applications as Ext ...
: YAML Ain't Markup Language (initially "Yet Another Markup Language")
* YARA Yara may refer to:
People
* YARA (girl group), a Filipino girl group
* Yara (given name)
* Yara (surname), a Japanese surname
* Yara (singer) (born 1983), Lebanese pop singer
* Yara (footballer) (born 1964), Brazilian footballer
Locations ...
: Yara: Another Recursive Acronym
* Zinf
Zinf is a free audio player for Unix-like and Windows operating systems. Zinf is released under the GNU General Public License.
Zinf is a continuation of the FreeAmp project and uses the same source code.
Technical features
Zinf can play soun ...
: Zinf Is Not FreeAmp
* ZWEI: ZWEI Was EINE Initially ("eins" and "zwei" are German for "one" and "two" respectively)
Other examples
Companies and organizations
* BWIA: BWIA West Indies Airways (formerly British West Indian Airways)
* Cygnus Solutions
Cygnus Solutions, originally Cygnus Support, was founded in 1989 by John Gilmore, Michael Tiemann and David Henkel-Wallace to provide commercial support for free software. Its tagline was: ''Making free software affordable''.
For years, employe ...
: "Cygnus, Your GNU Solutions"
* HIJOS: Hijos por la Identidad y la Justicia contra el Olvido y el Silencio
* HIM: HIM International Music, Taiwanese independent record label
* JACK: JACK Audio Connection Kit
* KGS: KGS Go Server
* MEGA: MEGA Encrypted Global Access
* MIATA
The Mazda MX-5 is a lightweight two-passenger roadster sports car manufactured and marketed by Mazda with a front mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive layout. The convertible is marketed as the or in Japan, and as the Mazda Miata () in the United S ...
: MIATA is Always the Answer
* MOM: MOM's Organic Market
* SAAB: Saab Automobile AB
* VISA: Visa International Service Association
* XBMC: XBMC Media Center (originally Xbox Media Center)
* ZINC
Zinc is a chemical element with the symbol Zn and atomic number 30. Zinc is a slightly brittle metal at room temperature and has a shiny-greyish appearance when oxidation is removed. It is the first element in group 12 (IIB) of the periodi ...
: ZINC Is Not Commercial
In media
* TTP: a technology project in the '' Dilbert'' comic strip. The initials stand for "The TTP Project".
* GRUNGE
Grunge (sometimes referred to as the Seattle sound) is an alternative rock genre and subculture that emerged during the in the American Pacific Northwest state of Washington, particularly in Seattle and nearby towns. Grunge fuses elements of ...
: defined by Homer Simpson
Homer Jay Simpson is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the American animated sitcom ''The Simpsons''. He is voiced by Dan Castellaneta and first appeared, along with the rest of his family, in '' The Tracey Ullman Show'' short ...
in ''The Simpsons
''The Simpsons'' is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical depiction of American life, epitomized by the Simpson family, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, ...
'' episode ''That '90s Show
''That '90s Show'' is an upcoming American television period teen sitcom set during the summer of 1995, featuring characters and locales which debuted in its predecessor, ''That '70s Show.'' It is set to premiere on Netflix on January 19, 2023. ...
'' as "Guitar Rock Utilizing Nihilist Grunge Energy", another uncommon example of a recursive acronym whose recursive letter is neither the first nor the last letter.
* BOB: the primary antagonist from the series ''Twin Peaks
''Twin Peaks'' is an American mystery serial drama television series created by Mark Frost and David Lynch. It premiered on ABC on April 8, 1990, and originally ran for two seasons until its cancellation in 1991. The show returned in 2017 ...
''. His name itself is an acronym standing for "Beware of BOB".
* KOS-MOS
( recursive acronym for Kosmos Obey Strategical Multiple Operation System) is a fictional character from the ''Xenosaga'' role-playing video game series by Monolith Soft and Bandai Namco Entertainment. KOS-MOS also appears as a major character in ...
: a character from the ''Xenosaga
''Xenosaga'' is a role-playing video game series developed by Monolith Soft and primarily published by Namco. Forming part of the wider '' Xeno'' metaseries, ''Xenosaga'' is set in a science fiction universe and follows a group of characters as t ...
'' series of video games. "KOS-MOS" is a recursive acronym meaning "Kosmos Obey Strategical Multiple Operating Systems".
* Hiroshi Yoshimura's "A・I・R" stands for "AIR IN RESORT".
Mutually recursive or otherwise special
* The GNU Hurd
GNU Hurd is a collection of microkernel servers written as part of GNU, for the GNU Mach microkernel. It has been under development since 1990 by the GNU Project of the Free Software Foundation, designed as a replacement for the Unix kernel, and ...
project is named with a mutually recursive acronym: "Hurd" stands for "Hird of Unix-Replacing Daemons", and "Hird" stands for "Hurd of Interfaces Representing Depth."
* RPM, PHP, XBMC and YAML were originally conventional acronyms which were later redefined recursively. They are examples of, or may be referred to as, backronym
A backronym is an acronym formed from an already existing word by expanding its letters into the words of a phrase. Backronyms may be invented with either serious or humorous intent, or they may be a type of false etymology or folk etymology. The ...
ization, where the official meaning of an acronym is changed.
* Jini claims the distinction of being the first recursive anti-acronym: 'Jini Is Not Initials'. It might, however, be more properly termed an anti-backronym because the term "Jini" never stood for anything in the first place. The more recent " XNA", on the other hand, was deliberately designed that way.
* Most recursive acronyms are recursive on the first letter, which is therefore an arbitrary choice, often selected for reasons of humour, ease of pronunciation, or consistency with an earlier acronym that used the same letters for different words, such as PHP, which now stands for "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor", but was originally "Personal Home Page". However YOPY, "Your own personal YOPY" is recursive on the last letter.
* A joke implying that the middle initial "B." in the name of Benoit B. Mandelbrot stands for "Benoit B. Mandelbrot" plays on the idea that fractals
In mathematics, a fractal is a geometric shape containing detailed structure at arbitrarily small scales, usually having a fractal dimension strictly exceeding the topological dimension. Many fractals appear similar at various scales, as illus ...
, which Mandelbrot studied, repeat themselves at smaller and smaller scales when examined closely.
Other
* According to Hayyim Vital, a 16th–17th century kabbalist, the Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
word ''adam'' (אדם, meaning "man") is an acronym for ''adam, dibbur, maaseh'' (man, speech, deed).
* According to Isaac Luria
Isaac ben Solomon Luria Ashkenazi (1534Fine 2003, p24/ref> – July 25, 1572) ( he, יִצְחָק בן שלמה לוּרְיָא אשכנזי ''Yitzhak Ben Sh'lomo Lurya Ashkenazi''), commonly known in Jewish religious circles as "Ha'ARI" (mean ...
, a 16th century kabbalist, the Hebrew word ''tzitzit
''Tzitzit'' ( he, ''ṣīṣīṯ'', ; plural ''ṣīṣiyyōṯ'', Ashkenazi: '; and Samaritan: ') are specially knotted ritual fringes, or tassels, worn in antiquity by Israelites and today by observant Jews and Samaritans. are usual ...
'' (ציצת in its Biblical spelling, meaning "ritual fringes") is an acronym for ''tzaddik yafrid tzitziyotav tamid'' ("a righteous person should separate he strings ofhis ''tzitzit'' constantly").Mishnah Brurah, 8:18
/ref>
See also
*
* (Redundant Acronym Syndrome syndrome)
*
* TLA, the three-letter acronym for three-letter acronyms
* , which intentionally uses the acronym "OWL"
References
*
External links
* {{Wiktionary-inline, recursive acronym
Recursive
Recursion
Rhetoric
Self-reference
Types of words
Word play
it:Acronimo#Acronimo ricorsivo