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Comment by timdorr | Hacker News Reader

Any reason or history behind the name? It means "a stupid person", which seems like a bad choice IMHO: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dolt

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Git - (Chiefly British Slang) An unpleasant, contemptible, or frustratingly obtuse person.

https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=git

Dolt - A stupid person; a dunce.

https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=dolt

I think both names are apt.

You are correct. It is an homage to Git. We needed a word that meant "idiot" or similar, that started with D for data that was short enough to type on the command line.

I actually thought at first glance the name was Do-It, which reminds me of this story from Bill Atkinson doing user testing at Apple:

We had a place where we would put up a dialog that would say “Do It”, or “Cancel”, and we’d give somebody a document and say “Here, edit this and save it”, and they’d get to the point where they’re supposed to choose “Do It”, and they’d look a little miffed, and then hit cancel. And we saw that several times, different people.

[...] And when we saw this [in the video recordings], people looking a little miffed and then hitting cancel instead of do it, we turned up the volume and played it back, and [heard them mutter]: “What’s this ‘Dolt’?” I’m no dolt! So I hit cancel”.

https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=...

That's also what Git means.

"I'm an egotistical bastard, and I name all my projects after myself." --Linus

In case it isn't obvious, this is a joke, Linus actually didn't name Linux after himself, the person who hosted the original source tree did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux#Naming

However, Linux was a name that Linus had considered before dismissing it as too self-centered. It wasn't invented by the later host.

Linus is self-aware enough that I'm sure there's a kernel of truth to that joke, but both git and mercurial were clearly inspired by the BitKeeper fiasco. They describe an unpleasant and ill-tempered person, respectively.

There's a lot of different ways that you could interpret the name Linus chose. That's part of what made it clever.

“Mercurial” doesn’t mean ill-tempered. It typically means fickle, changing. That can be related to moods (regularly pleasant, but inclined to fly off the handle with little provocation) but that is by no means its only application. It can also mean sprightly (connecting with the “changing” meaning), which is quite the opposite of ill-tempered.

Mercurial also means quick witted.

Interesting. I don't think I've heard it used in a positive way before. If I knew anything at all about Mercury in Roman mythology, perhaps the other possible interpretations would have been more obvious.

I was wondering how many new projects with names derived from insults would now arise. Having searched on github for a few, my conclusion is that all the best ones have already been taken.

What does git mean?

honestly, maybe this reflects my americanness but I presumed it was derived from the (western film/culture) word, a corruption of 'get'. Today I learned that it means something else in british.

Oh huh, I didn't realize it didn't mean the same in American English. I guess I knew it, I just never realized it.

You can hardly watch more than a few hours of british comedy without someone being called a 'stupid git' at some point.

Sadly my consumption of British comedy has been -it crowd (of course), -monty python, and -mr bean (no words)

It's such a short word I'd probably have missed it or misheard it as 'cad' or something.

Or listen to the Beatles https://genius.com/836309

I learned about the British meaning from reading the Harry Potter books.

Looks like you are looking for an argument [1]

[1] https://youtu.be/xpAvcGcEc0k?t=50

it's of a piece with git:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/git

That definition misses a significant portion of the commonly used meaning: someone who is unpleasant (as in mean, annoying)

For instance: stop being such a git - this is not imploring someone not to be stupid, it's saying don't be annoying, awkward etc.

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/amp/english/git

Yeah, I too am tired of projects named mean-ly. Git, dolt, LAME, Gimp... DWARF is borderline, even if it has historical reasons (being based on ELF) it's not nice to hear out of context.

Even if it's a joke on yourself, just like, why would you give anyone who hasn't heard of your project the idea that it might be mean?

You wouldn't name your pet Dumbass. Why your pet project.

A bit off topic, but at summer camp many years ago, a counselor looked over my shoulder while I was using GIMP, and said something like "that's a sick joke". And that's how I learned about BDSM.

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