Oracle was originally named after Project Oracle.
Oracle Corporation traces its beginnings to a project for the Central Intelligence Agency called Project Oracle. Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates worked at Software Development Laboratories, the company founded in 1977 that pursued the project. The name “Oracle” was later adopted for the company’s database software and eventually became the corporate identity.
The project’s significance was tied to the relational database concept, which organizes information into tables that can be queried and related. Oracle’s founders were influenced by a 1970 paper by IBM researcher Edgar F. Codd describing the relational model. The company was first called Software Development Laboratories, then Relational Software, Inc., before becoming Oracle Systems Corporation in 1982. Oracle is not named after the Oracle at Delphi; its corporate naming story comes from the CIA project.