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Ask HN: What does “git” stand for?

4 points by uptownhr ↗ HN
My collegue asked today, what does GIT stand for. I tried searching and found out that GIT "means" idiot, an unpleasant person, etc... but could not find out what the acronym of our versioning tool stands for. Anyone know?

11 comments

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mkdir
I have never seen "Git" written in all-caps, and I've seen no real indication that it's an acronym.

It looks like you may have stumbled upon this already, but according to Wikipedia, Linus said the following about Git's name:

> Torvalds has quipped about the name git, which is British English slang roughly equivalent to "unpleasant person". Torvalds said: "I'm an egotistical bastard, and I name all my projects after myself. First 'Linux', now 'git'." The man page describes git as "the stupid content tracker".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_(software)

[deleted]
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0xdeadbeefbabe
It doesn't stand for something. Git provides you a derogatory word in the event it doesn't do what you want, it's a feature because you don't have to hunt for a word when you are stressed out about your code. "Stupid git" is my favorite.

If your colleague really wants it to stand for something you better think of something.