Python comes from Monty Python. C++ is the successor of C. C is the letter after B (another programming language). Haskell is named after Haskell Curry. Ada is inspired by Ada Lovelace. Java is coffee. Lisp is a contrived abbreviation of LISt Processor.
All of these facts can be found on the Wikipedia pages for the languages listed above, and more or less all other programming languages in existence have similar information linked to them—even ML, the MetaLanguage.
Here’s a random thought, maybe only remotely related to this. Since the file extension for Julia source code is .jl, why not reinterpret those two letters to signify one of the defining features of Julia — JIT compiler on top of LLVM?
When I first heard of the language, I thought of Julia from 1984. Now I will always feel the language is named for that fictional character. So, to me, it is named for the 1984 character.
Welcome, @Jason_Smith, I believe this is still official from Wikipedia (I’m not sure why people don’t look up, by now, there):
in April 2012, Karpinski said of the name “Julia”: “There’s no good reason, really. It just seemed like a pretty name.”
Jeff is also a co-designer of Julia, and only in 2021 he wrote (that’s also quoted on Julia’s Wikipedia page):
Maybe julia stands for “Jeff’s uncommon lisp is automated”?
I feel like the latter is a joke, a fairly elaborate one (you have to know of the Lisp language, and maybe Jeff’s other language FemtoLisp, a Scheme/Lisp variant, which is actually also included in Julia for its parser), but you can’t state that on Wikipedia.
I at least feel the “Maybe” crucial, and “it is” to be avoided. I realized you used the word “reconned”, but I wasn’t sure how known that word is, not being a native speaker, so I checked. It’s from 2003 (or earlier), a comic book term (short for short for “retroactive + continuity” from 1983 book or earlier).