[HUMOR for the ALERT] The question that seems to come up too often about the python name is a distraction. In particular, it is answered fairly prominently in many places as just being a nonsensical name because a founder once liked a comedic entity that chose an oddball name, so they did too.
But as languages develop and evolve, sometimes a name change may be a decent idea. Perhaps version 4.0 should be renamed Guido so we can get more silly questions. There once was a trend to name languages after alphabetic symbols like C and R. I shudder to think of the possibilities opened up as python embraced Unicode and we now can select from many thousands of such singletons, most of which nobody knows how to pronounce. Imagine people developing languages like X and Y and over the years enhancing them. An Enhanced or Extended X, naturally, might be renamed EX. With further Super new features (think super-symmetry in Physics) we would have a Super Extended X, or SEX in brief. Naturally, there may be a tendency to suggest that Y has some really neat features and perhaps you should extend X in the direction of Y in a sort of merger you might call SEXY. OK, enough kidding around. But realistically, as I study the history of Python including not just new features but deprecating and even removing old features, and sometimes doing major rewrites of internal implementations and adding brand new methods and ideas and endless modules and so on, I wonder if my analogy is stretchable. Python may have begun as a snake of sorts able to do a simple form of locomotion but over the years, it seems to have re-grown 4 legs to be more like other reptiles and perhaps become like some ancient dinosaurs and then kept changing as it started to walk on hind legs and then the front legs morphed into wings so that modern python is not limited to low-lying ground movement but can run and swim and even fly and is now more of a bird. Given my current name, dare I say it seems sort of AVIan? Nah! -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
