Where did the name for Microsoft Access come from?
We've seen
how
the names for some Microsoft products
had to be changed due to a name conflict.
I'm told that
the people who had to come up with the name for
the database product avoided
this pitfall in a clever way:
Instead of trying to avoid a name that was already taken,
they intentionally used a name that was already
taken:
By Microsoft itself.
They discovered that
Microsoft had a long-forgotten terminal emulator product
called Microsoft Access.
"Access" sounded like an appropriate name for a database product,
so they blew the dust off it and gave the name a new life.
