[lispm]

Steele/Gabriel about the name Common Lisp:

> After a day and a half of technical discussion, this group went off to the Oakland Original, a greasy submarine sandwich place not far from CMU. During and after lunch the topic of the name for the Lisp came up, and such obvious names as NIL and SPICE Lisp were proposed and rejected—as giving too much credit to one group and not enough to others—and such non-obvious names as Yu-Hsiang Lisp were also proposed and reluctantly rejected.

> The name felt to be best was “Standard Lisp,” but another dialect was known by that name already. In searching for similar words, the name “Common Lisp” came up. Gabriel remarked that this wasn’t a good name because we were trying to define an Elitist Lisp, and “Common Lisp” sounded too much like “Common Man Lisp.”

> The naming discussion resumed at dinner at the Pleasure Bar, an Italian restaurant in another Pittsburgh district, but no luck was had by all.

> Later in E-mail, Moon referred to “whatever we call this common Lisp,” and this time, amongst great sadness and consternation that a better name could not be had, it was selected.