RecursiveAcronym

Last edit April 16, 2010
Here are some examples of RecursiveAcronyms:

  • GNU - Gnu's Not Unix
  • Pine - Pine Is Not Elm
  • MINCE - MINCE is not complete EMACS
  • PHP - PhpLanguage (after going through some name changes)
  • TheGimp - once was 'The Gimp Image Manipulation Program' but now is 'The GNU Image Manipulation Program'. So the GnuProject doesn't only create a lot of RecursiveAcronyms, some are also destroyed because of it.

Pine is actually "program for internet news & email". See http://www.washington.edu/pine/

The GnuHurd probably is the first software to be named by a pair of mutually RecursiveAcronyms: