[masklinn]

> Maybe the word came from the Java community

Nothing of refactoring came from Java or its community. The formalization of its concepts largely came from the Smalltalk community (Opdyke, Johnson '90; Opdyke '92; Johnson, Opdyke '93; Opdyke, Johnson '93), using unit tests to ensure refactorings don't change behavior came from the Smalltalk community and automated refactoring tools came from the Smalltalk community (Roberts, Brant, Johnson '97; Refactoring Browser http://st-www.cs.illinois.edu/users/brant/Refactory/)

In fact, as you may note both the concept and the name are older than Java itself.

The only claim to fame Java has in relation to refactoring is Smalltalk refugees reimplementing IDEs and refactoring browsers for it.