Q: Where does the name ``C'' come from, anyway?
A: C was derived from Ken Thompson's experimental language B, which was inspired by Martin Richards's BCPL (Basic Combined Programming Language), which was a simplification of CPL (Combined Programming Language, or perhaps Cambridge Programming Language). For a while, there was speculation that C's successor might be named P (the third letter in BCPL) instead of D, but of course the most visible descendant language today is C++.
References:
Dennis Ritchie,
``The Development of the C Language''
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