Re: Quick questions about postgres name?
Achilleas Mantzios <a.mantzios@cloud.gatewaynet.com>
From: Achilleas Mantzios <a.mantzios@cloud.gatewaynet.com>
To: pgsql-general@lists.postgresql.org
Date: 2025-09-23T14:03:27Z
Lists: pgsql-general
On 9/23/25 05:17, Tom Lane wrote: > "Dan Mahoney (Gushi)" <postgres@gushi.org> writes: >> It makes mention of the original professor who spearheaded the project >> under a DARPA grant, but it would probably do well to know where the name >> came from. > You should read Joe Hellerstein's recollections [1]. But tl;dr: the > origin of the name is the old INGRES database system; Postgres was > then named Post-inGres. There are also some references to PostQUEL > referring to the ancient QUEL (QUEry Language) project [2]. I remember back in school (circa 1987) in the course of data structures, the topic of tree traversal using the 3 recursive methods : pre-order, in-order and post-order was quite popular back then, in this spirit, indeed, Postgres sounds like the next step of Ingres, but this is my sole impression ! > > regards, tom lane > > [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1901.01973 > [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QUEL_query_languages > > regards, tom lane > >