[otherusername]

To say that a mathematician doesn't intuitively understand single-letter names would be like saying a programmer doesn't intuitively understand a keyboard.

Dijkstra was a computer scientist in times where being a computer scientist meant you were basically a mathematician with a specialty. Semaphores were first introduced by him in one of his early EWDs (EWD35, http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd00xx/EWD35.PDF). At the time of EWD35, his EWDs were non-official musings, written in Dutch, intended to be shared amongst interested colleagues and such. It's not like he was writing a scientific paper.

I don't think Torvalds really meant anything much by it. He's just trying to be funny.