# Ruby was named before it existed

> The name came first, in a chat, before a single line of code.

- February 24, 1993: Ruby is named, Feb 24 1993

On **February 24, 1993**, before Ruby was a language, it was a conversation. Matz and a colleague, Keiju Ishitsuka, were talking about what to call the new language Matz wanted to build, and narrowed it to two options: **Coral** or **Ruby**. They chose Ruby, partly because it was shorter, and partly for the jewel imagery: a wink at **Perl**, since a pearl is June's birthstone and a ruby is July's (it happened to be a colleague's birthstone too). Ruby marks that date as one of its birthdays.

*Related:* [Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto](https://chunkybacon.dev/people/matz.md) · [The Christmas-release tradition](https://chunkybacon.dev/stories/the-christmas-release-tradition.md)

## Sources
- The Ruby Story (Two-Bit History, 2017): https://twobithistory.org/2017/11/19/the-ruby-story.html
- About Ruby (naming and history): https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/about/

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Source: https://chunkybacon.dev/stories/named-before-it-existed/
License: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)