
Nimrod is being renamed to Nim - bilalhusain
https://github.com/Araq/Nimrod
======
wiremine
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimrod#Idiom](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimrod#Idiom)

"In 15th-century English, "Nimrod" had come to mean tyrant"

"In 20th-century American English, the term is now commonly used to mean a
dimwitted or a stupid person."

I could see how you wouldn't want your programming language to be considered a
tyrant or a dimwit.

Or a dimwitted tyrant. ;-)

~~~
fsck--off
Nimrod was the great grandson of Noah, and he is mentioned in the book of
Genesis as "a mighty hunter before the lord." So great hunters were sometimes
called "Nimrod" as a compliment.

Bugs Bunny taunted Elmer Fudd, a stupid an incompetent hunter that failed to
catch Bugs Bunny, by calling him a Nimrod. But the children who watched Loony
Tunes didn't get the joke and so they assumed it was a synonym for "stupid and
incompetent."

Imagine that in the future people think that that "Einstein" means "imbecile"
because "you're a regular Einstein" was an ironic taunt. It's the same idea.

~~~
cjoh
Well, except that Einstein was an actual person, and Nimrod was a mythological
one.

~~~
Crito
Hardly an important distinction for these intents and purposes; particularly
since those stories were widely taught as fact until fairly recently.

------
HeyImAlex
Honestly, smart move. I'm kind of embarrassed to say that I decided not to
look into nimrod much, despite hearing great things about it from a few
people, all because of the name. Figured that it would never gain any
semblance of wide adoption under "nimrod" so why bother when there are other
languages that are just as cool and _may_ be a marketable skill someday? Or
maybe I'm just rationalizing my shallow knee jerk reaction after the fact.

Either way... nim sounds much better :)

~~~
sweettea
Technically, `nimrod` means someone who is a good hunter; I don't know why it
is viewed as a derogatory term.

~~~
ansible
You can blame Bugs Bunny. He was using it sarcastically when referring to
Elmer Fudd (one of the more inept hunters in the history of film). Viewers who
didn't understand the original reference began to think of it as just another
word for 'moron'.

~~~
UweSchmidt
Second post in the thread that cites "Bugs Bunny". If that is now canon and
required reading for educated people I have some work to do!

~~~
apetresc
They got it from Wikipedia, which also cites Bugs Bunny as the source of
"nimrod"'s modern meaning.

~~~
ansible
I had only encountered the term while watching the carton, which all my friend
did too. I didn't learn about the word's origin until much later.

------
nkurz
It's interesting to consider this in light of the opening quote on the
language's homepage (which still refers to it as Nimrod):

    
    
      The most important thing in the programming language is the   
      name. A language will not succeed without a good name. I 
      have recently invented a very good name and now I am 
      looking for a suitable language. 
      -- D. E. Knuth
    

[http://nim-lang.org/](http://nim-lang.org/)

------
codereflection
And yet loads of us use "git" without an issue.

~~~
stronglikedan
Just guessing, but I would say that's because "git" is only derogatory in
British English, and wasn't popular (if even existent) in American English
until it's use as the name of a DVCS.

~~~
orionblastar
I always thought that git was a form of got or get.

Get me the source code. I got the source code.

Git is almost like a slang word that means get or got.

Yeah in British English it means a stupid person, you useless git! Almost like
Nimrod means stupid dimwitted person.

~~~
JadeNB
> Git is almost like a slang word that means get or got.

Perhaps more dialect than slang?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_Along,_Little_Dogies](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_Along,_Little_Dogies)

------
orionblastar
Nimrod was a King of Babylon, he was considered a hunter of panthers.

The Greek Orion was supposed to be based on him and shares the same star
consolation. So was Osirus. His birthday was December 25th.

It was Arabic that gave the definition of a tyrant, as I suppose they saw him
as one.

Bungs Bunny called Elmer Fudd a 'Nimrod' in a cartoon that made the connection
of hunter to really dimwitted or stupid person. I guess that is where the
second definition came in.

Always research the words you use to describe your project, there may be
negative meanings to them. Even in a foreign language as well. Chevy Nova, in
Spanish it meant the car doesn't run.

------
joshfinnie
I can only see this helping them... even by a little. Never understood the
naming strategies of some folks.

~~~
rbehrends
The derogatory meaning of the word is US-specific. To the rest of the world,
Nimrod is simply the mythical character. Nimrod's author is German. It's not
surprising that he wasn't aware of the American slang usage.

~~~
aaron-lebo
Is Nimrod mentioned in any historical texts outside of the Bible? It seems
like Bible trivia that very few people would know, perhaps especially outside
of the US.

~~~
roywiggins
He was kind of a big deal in the Old Testament as a Baddie and Wikipedia says
his story was well-known, especially in Islam and Judaism.

> The story of Abraham's confrontation with Nimrod did not remain within the
> confines of learned writings and religious treatises, but also conspicuously
> influenced popular culture.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimrod#The_evil_Nimrod_vs._the_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimrod#The_evil_Nimrod_vs._the_righteous_Abraham)

------
lobster_johnson
Glad to see it. Sure, names don't really mean all that much in the final run;
influential brands tend to cancel out pre-existing negative connotations (see:
Git). But for nascent projects like Nim, a name with pre-existing connotations
can be a burden, and a cool name can give a useful boost.

Of course, what _I_ think when I see Nim now is The Secret of NIMH:
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084649/reference](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084649/reference).

------
ilaksh
In some important ways (clean code, performance, metaprogramming) the
engineering is way ahead of the competition. I'm actually amazed how quickly
this has gone from a little-known project to something that leading engineers
are putting in their tool belt as an alternative to Python, C++ and other
languages for a wide variety of tasks.

------
vezzy-fnord
The name change really only seems to be present in the repository description
for now. Virtually everything else has been left unscathed.

I think it's a shame, personally. The name "Nimrod" is just so distinctive and
it's going to be pretty hard (at least for me) to shake off the inertia.

------
stonemetal
So, is he going to change the logo to a rat?(after the children's book Rats of
NIMH) Seriously though the name was good for a chuckle but made the language
slightly more memorable. Mostly I tend to think of the British spy plane when
I hear the name, not the insult.

------
_asummers
People will get confused when people Google it and find the poset game Nim[1].
Unless of course that's what they were going for.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nim](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nim)

~~~
88e282102ae2e5b
If the programming language has any web presence at all, it will quickly bury
the game. Also, it's not like people are going to overhear the word "nim"
completely out of context and then google it. If you know it's a programming
language, it will be easy to find resources.

~~~
JadeNB
Given the long mathematical heritage of the game (check out its Google
presence:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=Nim](https://www.google.com/search?q=Nim)),
I'm not sure that I believe that it'll be so easily upset. On the other hand,
the first page of results for
[https://www.google.com/search?q=Ruby](https://www.google.com/search?q=Ruby)
(except the image results) are all about the language, not the gem, so I could
be wrong!

------
k__
why?

~~~
bilalhusain
I can't find any official statements about this renaming (there's a BigBreak
branch which is supposed to take care of renaming as per a thread reply on the
forum[1]) but I assume that people have been citing the name as a barrier to a
widespread adoption of Nimrod [2][3].

[1] [http://forum.nimrod-lang.org/t/541](http://forum.nimrod-lang.org/t/541)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7076451](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7076451)

[3]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7074774](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7074774)

