The name came first, in a chat, before a single line of code.
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. (The Ruby Story, Two-Bit History, About Ruby, ruby-lang.org)
Related: Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto · The Christmas-release tradition
Sources
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/