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I'm surprised this is such a hard answer for me to find.
It's such a strange name. Why are pickles called pickles?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickle_(Python)
I understand what "pickling" means with respect to vegetables and I understand that the python concept is analogous. But, why choose "pickle" instead of "serialization"? Is it an inside joke? Is there a history about it?
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Pickles have been around for thousands of years, dating as far back as 2030 BC when cucumbers from their native India were pickled in the Tigris Valley. The word “pickle” comes from the Dutch pekel or northern German pókel, meaning “salt” or “brine,” two very important components in the pickling process.
The term pickle is derived from the Dutch word pekel, meaning brine. In the United States and Canada, the word pickle alone refers to a pickled cucumber (other types of pickles will be described as "pickled onion", "pickled beets", etc.).
The word 'pickle' comes from the Dutch word 'pekel', meaning 'something piquant', and originally referred to a spiced, salted vinegar that was used as a preservative. In the seventeenth century, vegetables like cucumbers or gherkins that were preserved took the name.
Pickles can be made using one of three methods: refrigeration, fresh packed, or processed. All three achieve the same pickling end goal, but employ different strategies to get there, mostly involving the amount of brine—and the amount of time—the process involves.
From the verb to pickle:
vegetables, such as cauliflowers, onions, etc, preserved in vinegar, brine, etc
It is Python objects, preserved for later use. The name was taken from the Modula-3 concept, a language that inspired many Python features. Also see the Module-3 Pickle documentation.
I suspect Guido picked the name because:
shelve, a module added to the library in the same commit.If you ever get hold of Guido's time machine you could travel back to November 1994 and ask him yourself why he picked that specific name. I do notice that Ken Mannheimer already uses the term pickled objects a mere 10 days after the announcement of flatten as part of the follow-up discussion, probably referencing to the Modula-3 inspiration for the concept, and the name must've stuck.
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