Where does this come from, and can I check it?

Guido van Rossum took the name from Monty Python in 1989 rather than from the snake. The figure is taken from Python Software Foundation, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.

Is this really a technology fact?

Yes. It sits on the Technology shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.

What else can I read about it?

The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.

Mondo Knows Facts

Python is named after a comedy troupe

Guido van Rossum took the name from Monty Python in 1989 rather than from the snake Van Rossum began the language as a holiday project in December 1989, wanting something readable that could replace shell scripts and suit beginners. He named it after Monty Python's Flying Circus, and sketches from the show appear in early documentation. Python 2 and Python 3 differed in small but disruptive ways, and the older branch stopped receiving fixes in 2020. It sits in Mondo's technology collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.

Where this comes from

Python Software Foundation

Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.

Go further

Technology trivia Movies & Television trivia

More facts like this

BASIC was invented so students could use a computerKemeny and Kurtz created it at Dartmouth in 1964 so a beginner could write a working program in an afternoon COBOL was designed by a committee in 1959The United States Defense Department pushed a common business language so payroll programs could move between machines Lisp introduced garbage collection and recursionJohn McCarthy's 1958 language treated code as data and freed unused memory without the programmer asking ALGOL 60 gave programming its block structureThe 1960 report introduced begin and end blocks plus a formal grammar notation that is still in use Smalltalk made every value an object receiving messagesAlan Kay's group at Xerox PARC built a language where computation happens by passing messages between objects Pascal was designed to teach programming properlyNiklaus Wirth's 1970 language forced structured code and became a standard teaching tool in the 1980s

Tags: programming-languages, python, naming

Python is named after a comedy troupe: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?: Guido van Rossum took the name from Monty Python in 1989 rather than from the snake. The figure is taken from Python Software Foundation, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a technology fact?: Yes. It sits on the Technology shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?: The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.