### Question 20.38

Where does the name ``C'' come from, anyway?

C was derived from Ken Thompson's experimental language B, which was inspired by Martin Richards's BCPL (Basic Combined Programming Language), which was a simplification of CPL (Cambridge Programming Language). For a while, there was speculation that C's successor might be named P (the third letter in BCPL) instead of D, but of course the most visible descendant language today is C++.

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