[TUHS] inode - does it have a meaning?

[Marc Donner via TUHS]

Pedant alert: inode - does it have an etymology.  We know what it *MEANS*
... that's in some man page.\
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On Sun, Oct 5, 2025 at 1:04 AM Warren Toomey via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 04, 2025 at 01:38:00PM -0700, David Barto via TUHS wrote:
> > In a blog post today I read:
> >
> >       In most modern file systems, those data structures are
> >       known as inodes, and their numbers are inode numbers,
> >       sometimes shortened to inodes. The term is thought
> >       to be a contraction of index node, which certainly
> >       makes sense, but is lost in the mists of time.
>
> This is in the 197 CACM paper:
>
>   A directory entry contains only a name for the associated file and
>   a pointer to the file itself. This pointer is an integer called the
>   i-number (for index number) of the file. When the file is accessed, its
>   i-number is used as an index into a system table (the i-list) stored in
>   a known part of the device on which the directory resides. The entry
>   thereby found (the file’s i-node) contains the description of the file
> ...
>
> But an earlier version of the paper has this:
>
>   A directory entry contains only a name for the associated file and
>   a pointer to the file itself. This pointer is an integer called the
>   i-number (for identification number) of the file.
>
> See
> https://github.com/DoctorWkt/unix_timesharing_paper/blob/master/filesystem.md
>
> So you could argue that, at the time of this draft, the wording implies
> "identification node" for i-node.
>
> Cheers, Warren
>