It should be noted that expansion of 'perl' as an acronym was invented long after the language was named.

True enough, but its understandable that people think its the acronym (instead of a "backronym" or "retronym") when the first thing they see in "perldoc perl" is:

PERL(1)             2002-06-10 (perl v5.6.1)              PERL(1)


NAME
     perl - Practical Extraction and Report Language
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