Firstly, I think CPAN is awesome and has been amazingly useful to me and several hundred thousand others.

Secondly, PerlMonks and/or I should have no authority over what CPAN is called - it is not our project.

Finally, CPAN is a great name and everyone within the Perl community knows what it means, pretty much by definition.

The idea came from a perception that the connect between Perl and CPAN wasn't immediately obvious to someone that didn't know too much about them.

I thought that it would be cool if the short name that was used had Perl in it explicitly (not acronymized away). Like "Perl AN" as one example of many possible. When someone would talk about "Perl AN" than they would promote Perl a little bit more to anyone listening.

For example, when you ask your manager to use a module from "Perl blah" in your project - he knows it is the same as that "Perl" stuff he has heard good things about elsewhere.

Or when you say I found this really good module on "Perl blah" in a public forum - casual onlookers will know that it is the same as that Perl stuff - without expanding an acronym (which many will not bother doing).

As much as some consider Java lame - Sun has noticed something similiar with their names for J2SE, J2ME and J2EE and is changing them to Java SE, Java ME and Java EE this year. Not that that means anything - just thought I would mention it. (Some would consider this evidence against such an idea.)

Just a passing thought and not really a big deal in any case.

In reply to Quick thought: s/CPAN/Perl Something/g by tomazos

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