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Comment by mtreis86 | Hacker News Reader

Why are developers continually attributing new meaning to old terms? This has nothing to do with Lambda Calculus, anonymous functions, or Lisp. Why call it Lambda Architecture?

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Because people tend to want a nicely-sounding, familiar-looking name. So they reuse the same set of familiar words. They get overburdened with meanings, but also even more familiar-sounding.

It takes some guts and talent to name something with an alien, original word, like Google, or Atari, or Motorola.

Google is derived from googol, Atari is a japanese word, not sure if Motorola is derivative though.

I was curious too - "Paul Galvin wanted a brand name for Galvin Manufacturing Corporation's new car radio, and created the name “Motorola” by linking "motor" (for motorcar) with "ola" (from Victrola), which was also a popular ending for many companies at the time, e.g. Moviola, Crayola."

Neither "googol" nor "atari" (a very clever Japanese import) were common English words. Stuff like "lambda", or "spark", or "react" are more or less everyday words, with well-established previous everyday meanings.

I don't think that the people who invented the term "Lambda Architecture" did so because they thought it was a good technical summary.

I believe the Lambda Architecture is a simplified refinement of a previous idea, the Kappa Architecture. It's just one letter further along. I have no idea why a Kappa Architecture was named as such.

The Kappa architecture succeeds the Lambda architecture. This article not only says that, but is the origin of the new term.

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