What comedian’s troupe inspired the name of the Python programming language?

The Python programming language was named after the comedy group Monty Python.

Guido van Rossum created Python in the late 1980s while working at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica in the Netherlands. He wanted a language that was readable, expressive, and pleasant to use. While looking for a short name, he was watching the BBC television comedy series Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and chose “Python.”

The name is sometimes mistakenly assumed to refer primarily to the snake. Python’s official imagery does use snake motifs, but the original naming inspiration was the comedy troupe. This also explains names such as the Python documentation’s occasional cultural references.

Python was first publicly released in 1991. It later became widely used for web development, automation, education, scientific computing, data analysis, and artificial intelligence.