Recursive Acronym

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    Dilbert: Wally, would you like to be on my TTP project?
    Wally: What does "TTP" stand for?
    Dilbert: It's short for The TTP Project. I named it myself.

    —Dilbert, May 18, 1994

    An acronym in which one of the letters inside the acronym stands for the acronym itself. Because of the way English parses such things, attempting to fully expand the acronym causes an infinite recursive loop.

    Extraordinarily overused in computing culture for their giggle value, but absolutely straight-faced serious examples can be found in the business world and elsewhere.

    See also Fun with Acronyms. Occasionally overlaps with Shaped Like Itself.

    Examples of Recursive Acronym include:

    Business

    • BWIA—BWIA West Indies Airways (formerly British West Indian Airways)
    • SAAB—Saab Automobile Aktiebolaget (Formerly Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget)
    • ThinkGeek sells compressed air under the brand NINJA, which stands for "NINJA Is Not Just Air." They also carry a rear-view mirror for your computer called CHIMP, which stands for "CHIMP Has Invincible Monkey Powers".
    • Visa (the card company) stands for "Visa International Service Association". This expansion actually came some time after the original name was devised.
    • Heil Environmental Industries Limited, founded by Julius P. Heil, makes garbage trucks.

    Comic Books

    • The Archie Sonic the Hedgehog comics had ADAM (ADAM Determines Anonymous' Movements)
    • According to Atari Force, "Atari" stands for the "Atari Technology and Research Institute".

    Computing

    • It's fairly traditional and widespread, especially in MIT and later GNU-related (see below) circles. The suspected first case is "TINT Is Not TECO".
    • The operating system GNU -- "GNU's Not UNIX"
      • The GNU project's official kernel, Hurd, contains a mutually recursive acronym: "Hurd" stands for "Hird of Unix-Replacing Daemons," and "Hird" stands for "Hurd of Interfaces Representing Depth." (However, as Hurd isn't yet complete, most people using GNU software combine it with Linux, which doesn't stand for anything.)
    • Wine - Wine Is Not an Emulator (it isn't; it's a compatibility layer for the Windows API running on non-Windows operating systems[1])
    • LAME—LAME Ain't an MP3 Encoder. For the first two years of its existence, it was a patch (set of changes) to the sample encoder published by ISO. But it's been an Artifact Title since May 2000, when the last line of the ISO encoder was replaced with original code, allowing LAME to be distributed by itself.
    • NIL -- NIL Isn't Liero
    • SPARKS—have the biggest collection of acronyms, including "Smart Programmers Are Required (to) Know SPARKS"
    • Early versions of the common emails one receives claiming that Bill Gates will give one money for forwarding the email to all one's friends as a test of his newly developed email tracking application often contain a blatant clue that the email is a hoax. The text often refers to the alleged email tracking system as the "Beta Email Tracking Application", which (of course) recursively acronyms to "BETA".
    • PHP—PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor
      • It originally stood for "Personal Home Page", but they changed it.
    • HIPI—HIPI Is a Piet Interpreter
    • XBMC—used to stand for "Xbox Media Center". Once the program was ported to other platforms, it became "XBMC Media Center" until the name was changed to Kodi in mid-2014.
    • Popular text-based email program PINE—Pine Is Nearly ELM. (ELM being another popular email program, though not recursive). However, PINE's successor, Alpine, does not seem to stand for anything.
    • XNA -- "XNA's Not Acronymed" (an engine made by Microsoft that make use of the .NET framework to make interactive media such as games. it's commonly used by indie developers to make games for the Xbox 360, although it can also be used on Microsoft Windows and the Windows Phone 7).
      • On the top of that, XNA's logo is also an acronym. The orange part of logo is actually written in morse code, "-..-" meaning "X" while "-." means "N" and ".-" means "A".
    • Mini—Mini Is Not IOS (Mini is part of Bootmii, a method to execute a low-level bypass of the Wii System Menu and load homebrew.)
    • AROS -- "AROS Research Operating System", formerly "Amiga Research Operating System", a free and Open-Source variation on Amiga OS, renamed in order to avoid legal action from the owners of the Amiga trademark.
    • Allegro () -- "Allegro Low Level Game ROutines", formerly "Atari Low Level Game ROutines" (Allegro is a low-level game programming library that mostly just provides easy access to the hardware, similar to SDL)
    • PNG—PNG's Not GIF (as PNG was conceived as a replacement for static GIF images though it also stands for Portable Network Graphics.)
    • JACK -- Jack Audio Connection Kit (a sound system for pro-audio/MIDI work under Linux)
    • The LaTeX package Tikz—Tikz Ist Kein Zeichnungprogramm (Tikz is not a drawing program).
    • UIRA—UIRA Isn't a Recursive Acronym
    • Synthesia, a game to learn how to play piano, was formerly known as Piano Hero. After they got C&D order from Activision, the developer opened a poll for the new name of the game and one of the name requests was as follows: "SINPHONY Is Not Piano Hero Or New York".
    • MINCE—MINCE Is Not Complete Emacs (Emacs is a text editor)
      • SINE Is Not EMACS
      • EINE Is Not EMACS
    • ZWEI Was EINE Initially (Double points for the German numbering) "Eins" is the German wor for "One" and "Zwei" the word for "Two"
    • Averting all the "X is not an Y." examples above: BIABI is a Brainfuck Interpreter.
    • The name of the object-oriented BASIC dialect Gambas stands for Gambas Almost Means BASIC.
    • Xinu stands for Xinu Is Not Unix.
    • Cave - Cave automatic virtual environment
    • RPM—RPM Package Manager. Formerly Redhat Package Manager before it started to be used by OS other then redhat.

    Literature

    • GOD—GOD Over Djinn (from Douglas R. Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach).
      • Chapter 18 of Hofstadter's Metamagical Themas includes a menu of mutually-recursive food acronyms, such as "TOMATOES on MACARONI (and TOMATOES only), exquisitely SPICED".
    • Scott Adams once had Dilbert assigned to the TTP project at his workplace—TTP standing for "the TTP project".
    • In More Information Than You Require, John Hodgman advises memorizing names through mnemonics. For example, the name "John" becomes "John Or Hodgman Name".
    • Wyrm features a computer program called TRAP that writes recursive acronyms. Naturally, TRAP stands for TRAP Recursive Acronym Program.

    Live Action TV

    • In Twin Peaks, Big Bad "BOB"'s name was a recursive acronym standing for "Beware of BOB".
    • In one episode of M*A*S*H, Radar defines "AWOL" as "A.W.O.L. without leave".
    • In series four of Doctor Who, it takes the "use letters from within the words" cheat to its logical conclusion with ATMOS, which stands for "ATMOSpheric Omissions System". Yes, we know you don't spell 'emissions' like that, but it's written on all the stickers on the car windows... and the final S has to come from System, or Rattigan's whining makes no sense.
      • Considering what the device is supposed to do (disregarding the Sontarans' plans), "Omissions" does make sense, as it does omit the emissions on the vehicle the device is installed on.
    • The occasional Colbert Report segment Stephen R.A.P.S, which stands for RAPS And Positive Speaking.
    • Kamen Rider Blade has the B.O.A.R.D. Organization, which stands for Board Of Archaeological Research Department.
    • In one episode of Acorn the Nature Nut (a nature show for kids), he received a letter where a kid called their beetle "Black B.B." and the "B.B." stood for "Black B.B."

    Tabletop Games

    Video Games

    • In Xenosaga, Robot Girl KOS-MOS's name stands for "Kosmos Obey Strategical Multiple Operation Systems."

    Web Comics

    "Or have you forgotten how 'Hamlet' stands for 'H.A.M.L.E.T.'s Actually Me: Lshak Espeare Thrustbottoms'?"

    Web Original

    Diabetus: What does E.P.I.C. stand for again?
    Proteus: Epic... something, something, something.
    Slowbeef: It's a recursive acronym.

    Real Life

    • Liberal activist and former CIA officer Ray McGovern described the foreign policy motives of so-called "neocons" with the acronym OIL: O for oil, I for Israel, and L for logistics (military bases in Iraq).
    • RED Corp., one of the casting agencies that provide the stuntmen for Super Sentai and Kamen Rider, stands for "Red Entertainment Deliver".
    1. ↑ Only on 32-bit and 64-bit x86 architectures, however. When using another architecture, an actual emulator would be needed.
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