I just came across the word yahoo, and went to look up its etymology. I thought it was an exclamation, like yoo-hoo! something like Yay! or Whoa! or yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! Turns out not at all. According to Wikipedia, for the name of the service yahoo com, Jerry Yang and David Filo chose the acronym they invented “Yet Another Hierarchically Organized/Officious Oracle” — yet another hierarchically organized Oracle. But that’s not why I went into the dictionary. I read in a book: “Because Kendrick thinks there are a bunch of yahoos from the beach”. It turns out, this is a reference to the people yahoos from “Gulliver’s Travels”. I can’t for the life of me remember all four parts—curious, has anyone of you read them all? Anyway, there are in the fourth part these filthy human-like creatures – yahoos (yahoo), inhabiting the country of virtuous horses-houyhnhnms. These houyhnhnms disdainfully viewed the yahoos but used them as labor animals. Moreover, these yahoos were seen by the houyhnhnms as such moral deformities that they seriously considered castrating all Yahoos to prevent their reproduction. If you look closely, the book isn’t for children at all. For example, there is a particularly unpleasant scene in the visit to Lilliput, where Gulliver urinates on the queen’s house to extinguish a devastating fire. This scene is regularly included in children’s editions, albeit in a sanitized form. Then there’s a scene in one of Gulliver’s last adventures where our hero has to defend himself from an extremely lustful female Yahoo, who apparently intends to rape him.
Lindalino, the most unusual place, is another name for Dublin (double “lin”). The flying city of Laputa is a harsh allegory for England and its colonial rule over Ireland—the name means “whore” in Spanish (la puta). As for the kingdom of Tribnia, it is an anagram of Britain. Its inhabitants call it Langden, an anagram of England.
So, I research further, and come across a reference to an interview with Yang and Filo. Their version differs from the corporation’s version with the hierarchical Oracle—Yang and Filo openly say that the roots of the name are from Swift’s “Gulliver”. The fact is that both founders were from Louisiana, where “yahoo” was common slang among students, used to designate themselves and other similar rustic and unrefined Southern residents.
And the Yahoo! site is still alive!
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 