A recursive acronym (or occasionally recursive initialism) is an abbreviation which refers to itself in the expression for which it stands. Due to the nature of the English language, which would infinitely recurse left-recursive phrases, recursive abbreviations are circular definitions. This article does not cite any references or sources. ... A visual form of recursion known as the Droste effect. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... In computer science, left recursion is a special case of recursion. ... A circular definition is one that assumes a prior understanding of the term being defined. ...

Computer-related examples

In computing, an early tradition in the hacker community (especially at MIT) was to choose acronyms and abbreviations that 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"). Memory (Random Access Memory) Look up computing in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... For other uses, see Hacker (disambiguation). ... The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private, coeducational research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ... TECO (pronounced /teekoh/; originally an acronym for [paper] Tape Editor and COrrector, but later Text Editor and COrrector) is a text editor originally developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the 1960s and was modified by just about everybody. With all the dialects included, TECO may have... The original Lisp machine built by Greenblatt and Knight Lisp machines were general-purpose computers designed (usually through hardware support) to efficiently run Lisp as their main software language. ... Emacs is a class of text editors, possessing an extensive set of features, that are popular with computer programmers and other technically proficient computer users. ...

Noted efforts (which nearly all look suspiciously like a simple acronym with an arbitrary letter stuck on the front to make it read better phonetically) include:

• Allegro — Allegro Low LEvel Game ROutines (note: the acronym was originally Atari Low LEvel Game ROutines until development shifted away from the Atari ST)
• AMARA - Amara Means A Recursive Acronym
• BUMP — Bump Up My Post
• CAVE — Cave Automatic Virtual Environment
• Cygnus — Cygnus, Your GNU Support
• FIAIF - FIAIF Is An Intelligent Firewall
• FIG - Fig Is Good
• GEECS — GEECS for Electronics Engineering Computers and Science
• giFT — giFT: Internet File Transfer
• GiNaC — GiNaC is Not a CAS
• GNE — GNE's Not an Encyclopedia
• GNU — GNU's Not Unix
• HERBIS — Herbis is the Erudite Recorded Botanical Information Synthesizer
• KIEL — Kiel Integrated Environment for Layout
• LAME — LAME Ain't an MP3 Encoder
• LIAR, a Scheme compiler — LIAR Imitates Apply Recursively
• LINE — LINE is Not an Emulator
• MICO — MICO Is COrba
• MINC — MINC Is Not C
• MINCE — MINCE is Not Complete Emacs
• MINDY — MINDY Is Not Dylan Yet (MINDY interpreter of the Dylan language)
• MiNT — MiNT is Not TOS (later changed to "MiNT is Now TOS")
• MINT — MINT Is Not TRAC
• Mung — Mung Until No Good
• Nagios — Nagios Ain't Gonna Insist On Sainthood
• NiL — NiL Isn't Liero
• PHP — PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor (originally "Personal Home Page" tools, officially changed for PHP 3)
• PIPS — PIPS Is POSIX on Symbian
• PLD — PLD Linux Distribution (originally "Polish(ed) Linux Distribution")
• RPM — RPM Package Manager (originally "Red Hat Package Manager")
• RNP Arrays - RNP (Ratios) are Not PDN.
• SAMI — SAMI is Another Model of the Ionosphere
• SCInterface — SCInterface Control Interface
• Scaled — Scaled Composites: Advanced Link to Efficient Development
• SPARQL — SPARQL Protocol And RDF Query Language
• TIARA — TIARA Is A Recursive Acronym
• TiLP — TiLP is a Linking Program
• TINA — Tina Is No Acronym
• TTP — The TTP Project (From Dilbert)
• TINN — Tinn Is Not Notepad
• TinNS — TinNS is not a Neocron Server
• TRM — TRM Recognizes Music
• UIRA — UIRA Isn't a Recursive Acronym
• Wine — Wine Is Not an Emulator
• Xinha — Xinha is not htmlarea
• XINU — Xinu Is Not Unix
• XNA — XNA's Not Acronymed, a Microsoft game development framework
• YAML — YAML Ain't Markup Language (initially "Yet Another Markup Language")
• YLEM - YLEM Lisp Environment for Music (a music composition system written in Common Lisp)
• ZINC — ZINC is not commercial, a free database for virtual screening
• Zinf — Zinf Is Not FreeA*p
• Zombie — Zombie-Oriented Machine-Being Interface Engine

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." The Allegro library logo. ... Look up BUMP and bump in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Lechuguilla Cave, New Mexico A cave is a natural underground void large enough for a human to enter. ... Cygnus Solutions, originally Cygnus Support, was founded in 1989 by John Gilmore, Michael Tiemann and David Henkel-Wallace to provide commercial support for free software. ... Love gift Man presents a cut of meat to a youth with a hoop. ... GiNaC is a free computer algebra system released under the GNU General Public License. ... GNUPedia (later renamed GNE) was a project to create a free content encyclopedia (licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License) under the auspices of the Free Software Foundation that has been discontinued. ... GNU (pronounced ) is a computer operating system composed entirely of free software. ... Kiel ( ) is a city in northern Germany and the capital of the Bundesland Schleswig-Holstein. ... Look up lame in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Scheme is a multi-paradigm programming language. ... A diagram of the operation of a typical multi-language, multi-target compiler. ... MINC (MINC is not C) is a data specification language written in the mid-1980s by a Princeton University graduate student named Lars Graf. ... The Dylan programming language (pronounced , like the name) is functional, object-oriented, reflective and dynamic. ... MiNT (MiNT is Now TOS) is an alternative operating system (OS) kernel for the Atari ST computer and its successors which is free software. ... Freemacs is an opensourced Emacs clone written by Russ Nelson for DOS. Currently it is included in the FreeDOS project, and is maintained by the FreeDOS founder, Jim Hall. ... TRAC (for Text Reckoning And Compiling) is a computer language developed in the early 1960s by Calvin Mooers (1919-1994). ... Mung (or munge) is computer jargon for to make repeated changes which individually may be reversible, yet which ultimately result in an unintentional irreversible destruction of large portions of the original item. ... Nagios (IPA: //) is a popular open source computer system and network monitoring application software. ... Look up nil in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... PHP is a reflective programming language originally designed for producing dynamic web pages. ... PLD is a free, RPM-based Linux distribution, aimed at the more advanced users and administrators, who accept the tradeoffs of using a system, that might require manual tweaking in exchange for much flexibility. ... RPM Package Manager (originally Red Hat Package Manager, abbreviated RPM) is a package management system. ... Red Hat, Inc. ... Scaled Composites (often abbreviated as Scaled) was founded in 1982 in Mojave, California by famous aircraft designer Burt Rutan out of what used to be the Rutan Aircraft Factory. ... SPARQL (pronounced sparkle [1]) is an RDF query language; its name is a recursive acronym that stands for SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language. ... Wine is a project which aims to allow a PC with an x86 architecture processor running a Unix-like operating system and the X Window System to execute programs that were originally written for Microsoft Windows. ... XINU is a small multitasking operating system that was originally designed for teaching in the university environment. ... Microsoft XNA (XNAs Not Acronymed[1]) is a set of tools, complete with a managed runtime environment, provided by Microsoft that facilitates computer game design, development and management. ... Microsoft Corporation, (NASDAQ: MSFT, HKSE: 4338) is a multinational computer technology corporation with global annual revenue of US$44. ... Neverwinter Nights, a popular modern computer role-playing game, features a powerful 3D graphics engine. ... The Microsoft . ... YAML (IPA pronunciation: ) is a human-readable data serialization format that takes concepts from languages such as XML, C, Python, Perl, as well as the format for electronic mail as specified by RFC 2822. ... Common Lisp, commonly abbreviated CL, is a dialect of the Lisp programming language, standardised by ANSI X3. ... Zinf Zinf is a free audio player, released under the GNU General Public License. ... The GNU Hurd (usually referred to as the Hurd) is a computer operating system kernel. ...

The GNU Brain project is another mutually recursive acronym: "Brain" stands for "Brian relates any independent node" and "Brian" itself stands for "Brain implements a network".

RPM and PHP were originally conventional initialisms which were later redefined recursively. They are not true backronyms, however, as the names were already abbreviations and are pronounced as initials rather than as words. A backronym or bacronym is a reverse acronym, that is, the words of the expanded term were chosen to fit the letters of the acronym. ...

Jini claims the distinction of being the first (and possibly only) recursive anti-acronym, 'Jini Is Not Initials'. It might, however, be more properly termed an anti-Backronym because the the term "Jini" never stood for anything in the first place. Jiniâ„¢ (pronounced like genie) is a network architecture for the construction of distributed systems where scale, rate of change and complexity of interactions within and between networks are extremely important and cannot be satisfactorily addressed by existing technologies. ... A backronym (or bacronym) is a phrase that is constructed after the fact from a previously existing abbreviation, the abbreviation being an initialism or an acronym. ...

Non-technical examples

Recursive acronyms are not limited to computing terminology. For example, some corporations have been named or renamed in this way: A corporation (usually known in the United Kingdom and Ireland as a company) is a legal entity (distinct from a natural person) that often has similar rights in law to those of a Civil law systems may refer to corporations as moral persons; they may also go by the name...

• BWIA — BWIA West Indies Airways (formerly British West Indian Airways)
• FACT — Facts Are Correct Things
• GES — GES Exposition Services (formerly Greyhound Exposition Services)
• OIL — Oil India Limited (not really self-referential since oil is a word anyway)
• SAAB — Saab Automobile Aktiebolaget (Formerly Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget.)
• TAP Air Portugal — in Portuguese, however, TAP is an acronym for Transportes Aéreos de Portugal and is not recursive
• VISA — Visa International Service Association
• LINK (UK) — Link Interchange NetworK, the UK ATM switching organisation.

There are also some organizations that employ recursive acronyms: It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into BWIA West Indies Airways. ... Oil India Limited (OIL) is a oil company under the administrative control of Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Government of India. ... For other uses, see Saab (disambiguation). ... Saab Automobile AB is a subsidiary of General Motors. ... Categories: Organization stubs | Airlines of Portugal ... Visa is a brand of credit card and debit card operated by the Visa International Service Association of San Francisco, California, USA, an economic joint venture of 21,000 financial institutions that issue and market Visa products. ... LINK is an interbank network operating in the United Kingdom. ... It has been suggested that Organizing be merged into this article or section. ...

• MOMS Club — MOMS Offering Moms Support
• RESPECT — Respect, Equality, Socialism, Peace, Environmentalism, Community, and Trade unionism (also a backronym)

MOMS Club is a support group for stay-at-home moms. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... A backronym (or bacronym) is a phrase that is constructed after the fact from a previously existing abbreviation, the abbreviation being an initialism or an acronym. ...

Fictional examples

• KOS-MOS — Kosmos Obey Strategical Multiple Operation Systems, from the video game series Xenosaga.
• In the BBC series Look Around You, a parody of British educational television programs from the Seventies, MATHS was said to stand for "Mathematical Anti-Telharsic Harfatum Septomin".
• A recursive initialism appeared in a Dilbert comic strip, in which Dilbert states that the TTP project refers to The TTP Project (this is also a triply-redundant case of RAS syndrome).
• In Twin Peaks, Laura Palmer figured that her nemesis, Bob, was an acronym for Beware of Bob
• In the Archie Comics series Sonic the Hedgehog, the digital son of Eggman is named A.D.A.M., which has two meanings, one of which is "A.D.A.M. Determines Anonymous' Movements".
• In an episode of M*A*S*H, Radar O'Reilly refers to A.W.O.L as "A.W.O.L. without leave".

KOS-MOS Ver. ... It has been suggested that List of Xenosaga cast members be merged into this article or section. ... Look Around You is a BBC television comedy series devised and written by Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz, and, in the first series only, narrated by Nigel Lambert. ... Dilbert (first published April 16, 1989) is an American comic strip written and drawn by Scott Adams. ... RAS syndrome (Redundant Acronym Syndrome syndrome) is a common tendency to use one of the words which make up an acronym or initialism as well as the abbreviation itself, thus in effect repeating that word. ... Twin Peaks is an American Emmy Award-nominated, Peabody and Golden Globe-winning serial drama created by David Lynch and Mark Frost, which first aired in the United States on April 8, 1990 and ended on June 10, 1991. ... The cover of Sonic the Hedgehog #1, published by Archie Comics Sonic the Hedgehog is an ongoing series of comic books published by Archie Comics, featuring Segas mascot video game character Sonic. ... A.D.A.M. is a fictional artificial intelligence and antagonist from the Sonic the Hedgehog Archie Comics. ... M*A*S*H is an American television series developed by Larry Gelbart, inspired by the 1968 Richard Hooker (penname for H. Richard Hornberger) novel M*A*S*H: A Novel About Three Army Doctors and its sequels, but primarily by the 1970 film MASH, and influenced by the 1961... Corporal “Radar” O’Reilly is a fictional character in the M*A*S*H novels, the film, the television series, the television movie, W*A*L*T*E*R, and two episodes of the series, After M*A*S*H. The character was portrayed by Gary Burghoff in both the... For other uses of Desertion, see Abandonment. ...

References

• This article is based in part on the Jargon File, which is in the public domain.

The Jargon File is a glossary of hacker slang. ...

See also

Look up recursive acronym in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• RAS syndrome (Redundant Acronym Syndrome syndrome)
• Acronyms
• Backronyms and list of backronyms