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From: rembo@unisoft.UUCP (Tony Rems)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.unix.internals,comp.misc
Subject: Re: Jargon file v2.1.5 28 NOV 1990 -- part 5 of 6
Message-ID: <3268@unisoft.UUCP>
Date: 12 Dec 90 21:20:27 GMT
References: <1YbxGQ#2fbT353y6xKD8DT83C4bFDpV=eric@snark.thyrsus.com> <1990Nov30.172512.5282@sctc.com> <PCG.90Dec5162259@odin.cs.aber.ac.uk> <1990Dec10.173546.25184@maths.tcd.ie> <1990Dec11.165727.5357@odi.com>
Reply-To: rembo@unisoft.UUCP (Tony Rems)
Organization: UniSoft Corporation -- UNIX R Us.
Lines: 23

In article <1990Dec11.165727.5357@odi.com> dlw@odi.com writes:
>In article <1990Dec10.173546.25184@maths.tcd.ie> darragh@maths.tcd.ie (Darragh J. Delany) writes:
>
>   If I remember rightly the very name Unix was a pun on Multics
>   which was the epitomy of what an efficient operating system
>   should not have been.
>
>The word is spelled "epitome", and Multics was so efficient that its
>emulator for the alternative operating system that could run on that
>hardware (namely GCOS-3) actually ran programs FASTER than GCOS-3
>did itself.  The name "Unix" was meant to mean "a little version
>of Multics".  It had to be little, to fit on a PDP-7.

From page 3 of 
"The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD UNIX Operating System"

"Even the name "UNIX" is merely a pun on Multics; in areas where 
Multics attempted to do many things, UNIX tried to do one thing well."


Sounds reasonable to me.  

-Tony