DEV Community

Mtende Otis II
Mtende Otis II

Posted on

Why name it Javascript though?Emascript

Well I have always wondered why Javascript was named such even though they are not that related. I got my answer today. I would love to springle the Joy of this new found knowledge or explanation to you all.
Firstly, I got this from a very interesting conversation I had with a programmer who has alot of experience and I tried to cross check it with a blog by Brandon Morelli (https://medium.com/@bmorelli25) and the ideas seemed similar.
Well lets get into it. Javascript was named such to capitalize on Java. What do I mean by that? Back in the genesis years of the web, Java was that shiny toy everybody played with just like it is right now with React (cough!cough!) so naming it off of something famous attracted people. The point was to gain traction in the tech sector; use the name recognition of 'java' to leverage acceptance and usage.

Javascript as a language takes bits of other language like Haskell, Scala and even smallTalk(funny name for a programming language).So apperently the language that has inheritance also inherited.

Top comments (2)

Collapse
 
jcklein profile image
jck

the code name of JS during development was also Mocha, another coffee-related name

Collapse
 
mtendekuyokwa19 profile image
Mtende Otis II

wow I didnt know that thanks