Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!mcsun!ukc!sys.uea!cmp8118
From: cmp8118@sys.uea.ac.uk (D.S. Cartwright)
Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions
Subject: Re: What does 'UNIX' mean ?
Keywords: unix
Message-ID: <1284@sys.uea.ac.uk>
Date: 5 Feb 90 09:34:16 GMT
References: <1671@uniol.UUCP>
Distribution: news
Organization: UEA, Norwich, UK
Lines: 16

kuehnke@uniol.UUCP (Christian Kuehnke) writes:

>I wonder where the name "UNIX" derives from: Is it an abbreviation or
>just another unix-like slang-expresion (like troff, awk, etc.) ?

Here we go ...

	After Bell withdrew from Multics (a joint O.S. research thingy with
loads of other people like General Electric) some of the members of the group
decided they wanted a 'new computing environment' (to quote Paul Wang, in his
jolly spiffing book "An Introduction to Berkeley UNIX"), and so off they went
and developed UNIX, naming it thus apparently as a pun on 'MULTICS'.

	I hope that's right, but don't quote me on it ....

	Dave Cartwright, UEA, Norwich, ENGLAND.