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From: tih@barsoom.nhh.no (Tom Ivar Helbekkmo)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex,sci.math,sci.lang
Subject: Can someone tell me what NABLA means?
Message-ID: <993@barsoom.nhh.no>
Date: 16 Aug 90 22:18:28 GMT
Followup-To: comp.text.tex
Distribution: comp
Organization: Norwegian School of Economics
Lines: 19

I've been trying to find out these past couple of days what the origin
of the name of the character/symbol "nabla" is.  Nabla is used (as far
as I can gather) primarily in mathematics, and is a greek delta turned
upside down (i.e. a triangle standing on one of its points).  In
mathematics, I'm told it's also called the "del operator".  The name
nabla seems to be common in typesetting systems (TeX has it), and this
is what the character was called when it was part of ASCII.  (The
position it held in the ASCII table is now occupied by '@'.)

So far, I've found that it's not a Greek or Hebrew letter (as I first
thought it must be), and neither is it (I believe) of Phoenician or
Egyptian origin.  If anyone can tell me why nabla is called nabla,
I'll sleep better at night!  :-)  Oh, and if you're reading this in
sci.math, please respond by email, as I don't follow that group...

-tih
-- 
Tom Ivar Helbekkmo, NHH, Bergen, Norway. Telephone: +47-5-959205
tih@barsoom.nhh.no -- edb_tom@debet.nhh.no -- tih@macpost.nhh.no