Initially actually (afaik) it stood for N10, for the Intel i860 CPU. I think “New Technology” came from marketing then.

One of my very favorite facts about Windows 2000, as revealed in its boot screen, is that it's based on New Technology Technology.

(I no longer work with Windows very much, but this little bit of trivia has stuck with me over the years)

Nice catch. Too late to edit unfortunately.

VMS[1] is an OS for VAX[2] systems by Digital that Dave Cutler worked on before Windows NT (with the abandoned MICA OS for the equally abandoned PRISM CPU architecture between the two). As people have noted, the NT kernel is rather VMS / MICA like, because it's written by some of the same people, so they're solving problems with things they know work (with some people suggesting directly copied code as well, although VMS and MICA didn't use C as their main programming languages).

Some people point out if you shift characters by one "VMS" becomes "WNT", and give it as an explanation of the name choice of Windows NT, but it's a coincidence. For one thing, nobody ever explains how this gag was going to work back when the project was "NT OS/2"[3].

[1] Virtual Memory System, originally VAX/VMS, later OpenVMS.

[2] Later DEC Alpha, Intel Itanic and now AMD64 systems.

[3] AKA OS/2 3.0 or Portable OS/2.