Recursive acronym: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

A recursive acronym is an acronym which refers to itself in the expression for which it stands, similar to a recursive abbreviation.

The earliest example is perhaps the credit card VISA, which was named in 1976 as a recursive acronym for VISA International Service Association.

In computing, it soon became a hackish (and especially MIT) tradition to choose acronyms and abbreviations which referred humorously to themselves or to other abbreviations. Perhaps the earliest example in this context, from about 1977 or 1978, is TINT ("TINT Is Not Teco"), an editor for MagicSix. This inspired the two MIT Lisp Machine editors called EINE ("EINE Is Not EMACS") and ZWEI ("ZWEI Was EINE Initially").

More recent efforts include:

• LIAR, a Scheme compiler (LIAR Imitates Apply Recursively)
• GNU stands for "GNU's Not Unix!"
• PHP stands for "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor"
• PINE ("Pine is not Elm")
• Cygnus, which expands to "Cygnus, Your GNU Support" (though Cygnus says this is a backronym)
• PNG file format unofficially stands for "PNG's Not GIF"
• WINE - WINE Is Not an Emulator
• YAML - YAML Ain't Markup Language
• YODL - YODL Online Distributed Ludo
• NiL - NiL Isn't Liero
• GiNaC - GiNaC is Not a CAS
• LAME - LAME Ain't an MP3 Encoder
• MINC - MINC Is Not C
• RPM - RPM Package Manager
• Zinf - Zinf Is Not FreeA*p!

The GNU Hurd project is named with a mutually-recursive acronym: "Hurd" stands for "Hird of Unix-Replacing Daemons", and "Hird" stands for "Hurd of Interfaces Representing Depth".

Recursive acronyms appeared in a Dilbert comic strip, in which Dilbert states that the TTP project refers to The TTP Project.

A number of recursive acronyms are backronyms, which used to expand to a different string but whose expansion changed once the acronym was well-known, for one reason or another, to one which included the acronym itself. This includes at least PHP and RPM.

There is also an use of a recursive acronym in Gödel, Escher, Bach: GOD, the name of a genie, that stands for God Over Djinn. When asked to grant a meta-wish for an infinite number of ordinary wishes to be granted, GOD had to initiate an infinite recursion to all the GODs above him to get the required permission for such a wish. However, since each wish took half the time of the previous wish, the series converged, and the wish was fulfilled in a finite amount of time.

This article is based in part on the "Recursive acronym" section of the Jargon File. The Jargon File is in the public domain.