[microtherion]

Linda has a particularly unsavory origin story (hint: It has a connection to Ada): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_(coordination_language)

That probably wouldn't fly anymore in today's CS research.

As for Oberon, the moon may have played a role, but according to stories recently told at Niklaus Wirth's memorial service, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and the mythological character in general https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberon may have had more to do with it, as Wirth was said to have some flair for the theatrical arts in his private life.

[Rochus]

> "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and the mythological character ... may have had more to do with it"

Which contradicts with what he wrote in his "Project Oberon" book: "Although the search for an appropriate name for a project is usually a minor problem and often left to chance and whim of the designers, this may be the place to recount how Oberon entered the picture in our case. It happened that around the time of the beginning of our effort, the space probe Voyager made headlines with a series of spectacular pictures taken of the planet Uranus and of its moons, the largest of which is named Oberon. Since its launch I had considered the Voyager project as a singularly well-planned and successful endeavor, and as a small tribute to it I picked the name of its latest object of investigation." Also the books "Programming in Oberon" (where Wirth was co-author) and "The Oberon System" say the same. If he really did have "some flair" for the arts (besides "the art of simplicity"), he hid it very well.

[microtherion]

OK, that would be a pretty conclusive evidence that the moon was the primary consideration. However, it's entirely possible that the name, when it was in the news, caught his attention because of the mythological background. Cf "Lilith", the first workstation he built. "Ceres" again both has astronomical and mythological connotations — I'm not sure whether Voyager encountered Ceres, though.

Wirth's love of the theater (and costume parties) was attested to by his family at the memorial service. It was not something that his students knew about him (maybe grad students did).

[IncreasePosts]

It wouldn't fly, but I bet people would just obscure their true intent with a plausible story - "I wanted to make a language more beautiful than Ada, so I called it 'Linda', which means beautiful in Spanish"

[pimlottc]

I would imagine something like this happened for Linda itself, since I assume the author didn’t namedrop a porn actress in their PhD dissertation.

[zilti]

Your made-up story even wouldn't fly either nowadays.