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
>
>