Hacker News Reader

Counterargument:

Actually, Oxford English Dictionary says: "OED's earliest evidence for [the term] database is from 1953, in Sociometry."

(Source: https://www.oed.com/dictionary/database_n#:~:text=Where%20do....)

(Perhaps this Sociometry? : https://www.jstor.org/stable/i329357 ?)

View on HN

I could also believe many groups arrived at the term independently, deriving naturally from conversation along the lines of: "These are the data on which decisions are based"

See also Rich Hickey's definition of "basis". I bet he spent a good while digging into the etymology.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com