Writing a recursive acronym is a rite of passage for some and a trivial (potentially asinine) pursuit for others. What follows is a very casual analysis of some existing recursive acronyms as well as some strategies you could use when trying to craft your own. Additionally, The cheat sheets at the end of the post have some reference information to help construct your first recursive acronym.
What is a recursive acronym?
So you have decided that you want to write your first recursive acronym, but for some reason have no idea what one is? Luckily for you and the SEO gods, a definition is incoming. Recursive acronyms are acronyms which reference themselves. They are also sometimes referred to as self-referential acronyms. Techopedia defines a recursive acronym as follows:
A recursive acronym embeds a copy of itself within the acronym. One of the best known examples is Richard Stallman’s GNU project. GNU stands for “GNU’s Not Unix.” That copy in turn contains the word GNU, so the acronym is infinitely recursive. In GNU’s case, the acronym is a play on words: GNU is not Unix in the sense that it does not have any code dating to the original Bell Labs Unix, but the behavior of GNU attempts to mimic Unix systems as closely as possible.1
Now that we have a firm grasp of where we are going, let’s begin our quest to create a recursive acronym by visiting the end.
Tip No. 1 - Start at the End
Start at the finish line–that sounds easy enough, right? The truth is, it’s pretty difficult to have an acronym reference itself if the acronym doesn’t already exist. It is common to have an acronym in mind and then fit a recursive meaning into it2 (similar to a backronym).
If you don’t already have a word or acronym in mind to retroactively fit meaning into, you still have some choices available.
Wikipedia has a decent list of recursive acronym examples which we can use to identify some patterns. Note these common recursive acronym structures:
| Start | Middle | End |
|---|---|---|
| References itself | State (it is or isn’t something) | What is isn’t or is |
| References itself | Action | What it does |
If you know what the subject of your recursive acronym does or is, then you can work backwards in assembling your
recursive acronym. For example, if your subject is a library or a framework, you can try generating some acronyms
with L or F as the final characters.
Tip No. 2 - The Middle is for State or Action
Review the following selection of popular recursive acronyms…notice a pattern?
| Acronym | Stands For | Has Is? | Hidden is? |
|---|---|---|---|
| cUrl | Curl URL Request Library | no | no |
| EINE | EINE Is Not Emacs | yes | no |
| FIJI | FIJI is Just ImageJ | yes | no |
| GNU | Gnu’s Not Unix | yes | yes |
| MINT | MINT Is Not TRAC | yes | no |
| Nano | Nano’s Another Editor | yes | yes |
| LAME | LAME Ain’t an MP3 Encoder | no | no |
| PIP | PIP Installs Packages | no | no |
| WINE | Wine Is Not an Emulator | yes | no |
| YAML | YAML Aint Markup Language | no | no |
A whopping 60% of them have the state is either explicitly or hidden behind a contraction. It’s incredibly popular to
state what your recursive acronym either is (Nano, Fiji,) or is not (gnu, wine, MINT, EINE). Interestingly enough,
it is popular to say what the acronym isn’t, even while avoiding “is not” as with YAML and LAME both stating what
they aint.
With this in mind, if you know what your recursive acronym isn’t–then consider I, IN, or A for your middle initials.
If you already have the middle characters reserved, then don’t be afraid to use a contraction to sneak is into your definition
like in the example with both gnu & nano.
Cheat Sheet
While not being a rule, it is very likely that your recursive acronym will end with a noun. As such, it is very likely that your middle character(s) will need to be verbs3.
Verbs Beginning with a Vowel
Action Verbs
| Vowel | verb |
|---|---|
| A | Answers |
| A | Approves |
| A | Arranges |
| E | Edits |
| E | Enters |
| E | Exits |
| I | Imitates |
| I | Invents |
| U | Understands |
Linking Verbs
| Vowel | verb |
|---|---|
| A | Appears |
| I | Is |
Verbs Beginning with a Consonant
Action Verbs
| Consonant | verb |
|---|---|
| B | Breaks |
| B | Builds |
| B | Buys |
| C | Colors |
| C | Creates |
| C | Completes |
| D | Describes |
| D | Draws |
| L | Listens |
| P | Paints |
| P | Plans |
| P | Plays |
| R | Reads |
| R | Replaces |
| R | Runs |
| S | Sleeps |
| S | Solves |
| S | Study |
| Z | Zips |
Linking Verbs
| Consonant | verb |
|---|---|
| B | Become |
| G | Grow |
| L | Look |
| R | Remain |
| S | Stay |
Technical Nouns
This certainly is not an exhaustive list of technical nouns, but hopefully my spit-balling here is enough to get your
creative juices flowing. Obviously recursive acronyms can exist outside the software engineering domain, but nobody
out there seems to be interested in creating them :).
- Encoder
- Decoder
- Framework
- Library
- Processor
- Package
- Emulator
- Simulator
- Editor
- System
Don’t be afraid to use proper nouns either. Many existing recursive acronyms explicitly call out what they are or aren’t in relation to specific things–EINE, MINT & even GNU demonstrate this.
Conclusion
Attempting to write a recursive acronym is a fun & tricky pursuit. This blog post is a really casual musing, I am certain that there are more interesting patterns & strategies to uncover. Hopefully the tools and perspectives presented here help you along in your goal of creating a recursive acronym.
Footnotes
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Accessed 1/16/2022. https://www.techopedia.com/definition/21636/recursive-acronym ↩
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Accessed 1/16/2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recursive_acronym
Recursive acronyms typically form backwardly: either an existing ordinary acronym is given a new explanation of what the letters stand for, or a name is turned into an acronym by giving the letters an explanation of what they stand for, in each case with the first letter standing recursively for the whole acronym.
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I built the selected lists of verbs from this list Accessed 1/16/2022. ↩