Programmers and software developers lost the plot on naming their tools

Yep. Just did a reimage update to Fedora 43, got errors about 'ptyxis' in some shell scripts. Wat (wipes desk and keyboard)?

Oh, it's the graphical terminal program (alternative to 'gnome-terminal'). Well, um, ok.

However, I will concede, after more digging as to why (as it rankled), that there was a "have to choose a unique name" issue there (even leaving aside trademark issues). I'm resigned (so I suppose signed up) to deal with residual issues that crop up going forward.

I love to mock '*ly.com' names for almost certainly doomed enterprises, but I get that at least it wasn't already taken.

It’s a solid terminal, but could they have chosen a worse name?

pty is a Pseudo TeletYpe (aka, terminal emulator). It's 50-year-old word.

ptyxis is a word based on the 'pty' base, because it's not the only pty program.

It's a nearly-unique name, which is very good for the task of "discovering what it is".

There's another comment that points out that a g-le search will pick up few false positives (disclaimer, have not tried myself). So the initial 'WTF' gives way to 'well, ok, I see what you are trying to do'.