[TUHS] Unix, eunuchs?

Andrzej Popielewicz vasco at icpnet.pl
Mon Jun 5 06:44:57 AEST 2006


Michael Welle napisaƂ(a):

> Hi,
>
> last week a work mate told us a tale about how Unix came to its
> name. He believes that Unix is named after the term eunuch (a
> homophone of (to?) unix in english language).

In Oxford American Dictionary
eunuch (spelled yoo-nuk) . Is it the source of this tale ?

In Webster 3 edition (Koenemann, about 2000 pages)) unix is not mentioned
eunuch (spelled yu-nik,yu-nek)

> One can see Unix as a
> castrated successor of Multics.
>
Unix was Unics at the beginning(uniplexed information computer system)
as opposed to Multics (multiplexed information computer system),
last was working even in 1980.Even name suggests, that Unics was a 
simplified concept, of course at that time.
As You know most modern Unix boxes are multiCPU systems etc ,etc.

> Hmmm, I am interested in Unix history
> for several years now, but I haven't heard about that before. It is
> really a tale I guess. Any clear words about this topic?
>
> Michael
>
>
>
You will find tones of information in Internet.


Andrzej



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