Why is the C Programming Language called C?

Recently I have been doing some Javascript programming both for work and not-work. Javascript has a bunch of funny characteristics in comparison to other major programming languages. For example, JavaScript numbers are always stored as double precision floating point numbers, following the international IEEE 754 standard.

Short plug for https://projecteuler.net/. A wonderful site where a number of simple to complex problems designed for a computational solution are presented and solution checkers are provided.


Q: Why is the C Programming Language called C? or it's derived variants for that matter...

A: It's historical and follows a pattern of prior work.

CPL was a British project to create an all-singing all-dancing programming language.  The Common Programming Language.  The language was not a huge success .
CPL (programming language)  (1963)

The British computer scientists scaled it down a little. They reduced the scope and the ambition. This produced the "Basic combined programming language"
BCPL - a smaller language which was good for low-level programming. It was well suited for writing compilers and system code. BCPL  (1966)

This, in-turn, inspired the "B" language..  at Bell Labs
B (programming language) (1969)

And this was the basis for "C" at Bell Labs by the now famous engineer Dennis Ritchie.
C (programming language) 1969-73

C of course has many derived languages of its own; including popular C++, C#, Objective-C and many more.

(credit to Quora post from Glyn Williams)