note Perl Mouse <!-- Node text goes above. Div tags should contain sig only --> Perl is not an acronym. The name came first, the words that supposedly make this acronym came later. It's not written "Perl" because it's pronouncable - the name was picked to <em>be</em> a pronouncable word, and one with positive associations ('Gloria' has been a contender for the name of the language, and 'Perl' was almost called 'Pearl' - but it turned out that was already a language with that name (in fact, there are already several languages with the name 'Pearl')). <p> PHP on the other hand <em>is</em> an acronym. IIRC, it used to mean "Personal Home Pages", although I think it now stands for something else. <p> The fact that Perl is often written as PERL becomes from the 'joke' in the first manual page of Perl (which as survived till today) where the NAME section says: <code> perl - Practical Extraction and Report Language </code> <div class="pmsig"><div class="pmsig-496863"> <tt><font color="purple">Perl</font> <font color="red">--((8:>*</font></tt> </div></div> 510594 511696