Ajax Is a Flush Toilet?
Ajax in IT
Ajax is an abbreviation for ‘Asynchronous JavaScript And XML’, and it is probably a familiar concept to developers who build web applications.
Ajax (programming)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(programming)
Another Meaning of Ajax
In fact, this was also the name of a flush toilet.
Around the 16th century, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England, a courtier named John Harington invented a flush toilet and named it “Ajax”.
There was originally slang for a toilet called “jakes”, and it seems the name imitated that word.
For reference, toilets are often abbreviated as “WC”, but writing about that would go far off topic, so it is omitted here.
John Harington (writer)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harington_(writer)
Invention of the toilet Around this time, Harington also devised Britain’s first flushing toilet – called the Ajax (i.e., a “jakes”, which was an old slang word for toilet). It was installed at his manor in Kelston. In 1596, Harington wrote a book called A New Discourse upon a Stale Subject: The Metamorphosis of Ajax about his invention.
There are several stories about the etymology, but in fact it is not clear whether Ajax in web applications was named with the above meaning in mind.
Ajax is known to have first appeared in the article below, but that content cannot be found there.
Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications
https://immagic.com/eLibrary/ARCHIVES/GENERAL/ADTVPATH/A050218G.pdf
There is a detergent called “Ajax” in the United States, so perhaps the name was chosen with that in mind.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(cleaning_product)
At the time, SOAP also seems to have been used quite a lot for data communication with XML, so that may have been considered as well.
The blog above seems to have caused a big response after publication and updated its Q&A, but there does not seem to have been a question like “Does Ajax you meant to relate to a kind of cleaning product?”
Or perhaps it was judged to be an irrelevant question and ignored…