# Why is the name of the language "Julia"?

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/why-is-the-name-of-the-language-julia/4382>\
**Category:** Community\
**Created:** [June 21, 2017, 5:51am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/why-is-the-name-of-the-language-julia/4382 "2017-06-21T05:51:09Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 15

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**Author:** ![nilshg](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/nilshg/32/2283_2.png) [@nilshg](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/nilshg)\
**Post date:** [August 10, 2022, 9:11am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/why-is-the-name-of-the-language-julia/4382/15 "2022-08-10T09:11:43Z")

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Now that this old thread has been resurrected, I feel I also have to leave here my (admittedly retconned) favourite semi-official explanation:

> [@CAS benchmarks (Symbolics.jl and Maxima)](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/cas-benchmarks-symbolics-jl-and-maxima/58359/17):
>
> This is cool to see because it reminds me of a moment that was probably a key influence on julia. I learned the lisp lore that you could, say, write a macro to add type declarations to every subexpression, and then a good lisp implementation would generate fast code. I immediately thought two things: Why not just declare the types of variables? You can, but common lisp is generally too “type-unstable” (as we would call it) to be sure you’ll get the intended code. (May not be true for floats b…

(As the preview cuts out the punchline, it is: " **J** eff’s **u** ncommon **l** isp **i** s **a** utomated)

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