preg_match might actually be better expanded as practical_extraction_and_reporting_language_regular_expression_match. (I'd comment on the original but it's currently too overloaded for it, I gather.)
If you like you can add the “compatible” though, which would conveniently add to the length.
NAME
perl − Practical Extraction and Report Language
But I guess the php docs themselves have caused people to think that the p stands for 'perform' - from the php docs 'preg_match - Perform a regular expression match.'. So yeah.
The preg functions are wrappers around the Perl Compatible Regular Expressions library, though (PCRE) vs the older POSIX greg PHP functions, so I do think they mean Perl.