[throwaway81523]

Coq is "rooster" in French, keeping with INRIA's tradition of naming programming languages after animals, and pronounced approximately "coke". E.g. "coq au vin" (rooster with wine) is a standard French chicken dish consisting of what it sounds like. Coq (the program) is at least partly named after Thierry and Catarina Coquand, who worked on the Calculus of Constructions (the type theory used in Coq), and maybe also CoC (calculus of constructions, as mentioned).

It gets worse: a standard technique for proving correctness of imperative programs is called Hoare Logic, after C.A.R. Hoare, the inventor of Quicksort. And of course there is an implementation of Hoare logic in Coq.

I was asked a while back to give a talk about this stuff at work. It's maybe a relief that it didn't happen, since I dreaded having to say these names in today's environment. My plan was to put the slides up first (with the names and their origins on them), before saying the names out loud.

I don't think "coq" is slang for penis in French, though my French is at best rudimentary. I'm familiar with "verge" ("rod") and a few similar terms being used that way in French, but the English connotation of Coq's name is coincidental, I think.

[touisteur]

It's not slang for anything except someone far too proud of himself (yes, 'him'). And it's really not pronounced like 'coke'. It's cock but without the stress on both 'k' sounds, I don't know how to explain any other way than 'soft k'. It's also the name for eggshell, and if you've never had 'oeuf à la coque' with bread you're missing something (mostly an half-cooked egg eaten with a spoon, but what's the point of fully cooking an egg anyway...). Don't know if it factored in.

I'm not sure the pun is incidental, people like cute names with multiple interpretations. One other thing is that the rooster is kind of the national mascot. Here you'll hear someone shout 'cocorico' (rather mockingly) when some frenchman of woman realizes a feat. And there's a lot of self deprecation 'round here about the French being like roosters: feet in shit, and still blaring pride and moral lessons and thinking we're still a world power, to all who'll hear it. Our footballers have a rooster on their jersey I think, and you'll find many people here named Lecoq.

I think the 90s were a different, less PC time and the recent wave of indignation about schoolboys' jokes hadn't reached our shores, and most people here didn't speak that much English, even less the 'bad' words.

Not sure they expected the thing to become so popular then...