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The Name of the Language
The Viking ship is used as the logo for Q'Nial to reflect the Nordic origin
of the name Nial. On the suggestion of Prof. Ole Franksen of the Technical University
of Denmark, the acronym NIAL was chosen to describe the features of the language:
an interactive language with nested arrays and nested control structures, and
to be suggestive of the motivations behind the language.
A strong motivation in the design of Nial was to use "laws" or "identities"
that hold universally so that consistent properties hold and can be explained
easily.
The oldest Nordic saga, Njal's Saga, is the story of the coming of the rule
of law to the Viking settlements on Iceland around the year 1000 AD. Since Njal
is also sometimes spelled "Nial", the name was chosen for the language to remind
users of the importance of the universal laws of data incorporated into the
design of the language.
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