Just like JDBC is not an acronym, neither is Ajax
Submitted by charlie.collins on Tue, 04/24/2007 - 09:57
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And, notice that it's supposed to actually be Ajax for Ajax, and not AJAX.
As for JDBC, many people are surprised to learn that it is a trademarked term that is also "not an acronym" - "The JDBC API is a Java API for accessing virtually any kind of tabular data. (As a point of interest, JDBC is the trademarked name and is not an acronym; nevertheless, JDBC is often thought of as standing for 'Java Database Connectivity')."
Yes all this pedantry is silly, but the "Ajax" vs AJAX thing was news to me, so I thought I would pass it on. (I get the its a "collection of technologies" part, and the "+", but really, AJAX would have been better. Does this mean JDBC should be Jdbc, after all, it's not an acronym?)
Comments
Ajax never was an acronym,
Ajax never was an acronym, and if you actually read the article that coined the term, you can clearly see why.
As for JDBC, it DOES stand for Java Database Connectivity. Just check the Sun website to confirm that:
http://java.sun.com/javase/technologies/database/
It is not an acronym because an acronym is defined as the first letter of words in a phrase that are pronounced together as a new word, like NATO or LASER. FBI is not an acronym because you can't pronounce that as a word, which is the same case as JDBC.
No JDBC is not an acronymn, or an initialism
First, your definition of acronym as only letters that are pronounced together, while technically correct (in my book anyway), is not the common usage nor the usual definition. I find myself distinguishing between acronym and initialism once in a while, but it's only you and me, no one else on the planet cares to draw that line ;).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronym_and_initialism
"The term acronym is widely used to describe any abbreviation formed from initial letters." *any*
Second, JDBC is not an initialism, or an acronym or any of that because Sun is silly. It was a trademarked legal term at one point (some legal crap, not sure if actual trademark) and so Sun made all kind of statements like this:
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/guide/jdbc/getstart/intro.html
"As a point of interest, JDBC is the trademarked name and is not an acronym; nevertheless, JDBC is often thought of as standing for "Java Database Connectivity."
The other Sun documents that make it look like an initialism are because they are confused and contradict themselves at times, nothing new for Sun. That is why I put that same quote IN the article. I stick with what they used to say when they first brought it out, and for some reason, at that time, they were adamant that it was NOT an "acronym" (as *they* described it).