Etymology of the word register

[slugrustle]

Does anyone know the etymology for the word "register" as used in microcontrollers?  Where does it come from, historically?

[TimFox]

A typical dictionary definition of the term "register" before its use in computers:
"a written record containing regular entries of items or details"
as in an old-fashioned hotel register where guests write their names and contact information in the book.

[cantata.tech]

Sure.

Before I say anything, I need to point out that the origins of the word are contested on the internet and it's now claimed to be a 'Christian' word coming from Latin (Etruscan). I find it to be older than that.

"Register" is based on the old Phoenician particle 'gimmel'.

The root particle is gér. That means "Hold" something. Also coins, money, War, arm or weapons.

Also carried through French/Gallic as the word 'ongérer' or Guerre.

Therefore the word "re+gi+ster" literally means 'temporary holding thing'.

[brucehoult]

Does anyone know the etymology for the word "register" as used in microcontrollers?  Where does it come from, historically?

If you're content to go back only a few hundred years, Babbage used the term in his difference engine around 1820, as did people making simple adding machines in the early 1600s.

No doubt they got it from accountants.

[SiliconWizard]

Yes a register is simply some support where you'd store some information. The term has been used for a lot of purposes in the past, it goes way beyond accountants.
A common form of the same word is "registry", which is more about the medium where information is recorded.

It comes from the latin "registrum".
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/registrum

[NorthGuy]

I always thought that it comes from flip-flops. On every clock, flip-flops register their inputs (i.e. recognize, record) and hold them. Hence, people started to call flip-flop registers. Then when flip-flops where used in computers the word register moved on to the computer's world.

I don't think this has anything to do with collections of records. That would be registry.

[thm_w]

I always thought that it comes from flip-flops. On every clock, flip-flops register their inputs (i.e. recognize, record) and hold them. Hence, people started to call flip-flop registers. Then when flip-flops where used in computers the word register moved on to the computer's world.

I don't think this has anything to do with collections of records. That would be registry.

"A register is an official list or record of people or things."
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/register-records

what?

[brucehoult]

I always thought that it comes from flip-flops. On every clock, flip-flops register their inputs (i.e. recognize, record) and hold them. Hence, people started to call flip-flop registers. Then when flip-flops where used in computers the word register moved on to the computer's world.

As already mentioned, early 1600s mechanical adding machines with numbers being calculated with stored in the rotational position of wheels/gears, with one decimal digit per wheel, called each collection of wheels holding one number a "register".

That's a little before flip-flops.

[Doctorandus_P]

Another thing:

In the old days, "computer" was a job title. At some times those jobs got pushed out of the market by some kind of machine.

[amyk]

Does anyone know the etymology for the word "register" as used in microcontrollers?  Where does it come from, historically?

If you're content to go back only a few hundred years, Babbage used the term in his difference engine around 1820, as did people making simple adding machines in the early 1600s.

No doubt they got it from accountants.

...and only slightly more recently than that, the cash register.

The word "accumulator" also has similar roots.

[TimFox]

Another thing:

In the old days, "computer" was a job title. At some times those jobs got pushed out of the market by some kind of machine.

Richard Feynman's job at the Manhattan Project was running the "computers", most of whom were non-commissioned officers, typically corporals.
They were organized into gangs of calculation, using mechanical desk calculators, to compute what would now be done in "computers".

[brucehoult]

Does anyone know the etymology for the word "register" as used in microcontrollers?  Where does it come from, historically?

If you're content to go back only a few hundred years, Babbage used the term in his difference engine around 1820, as did people making simple adding machines in the early 1600s.

No doubt they got it from accountants.

...and only slightly more recently than that, the cash register.

I actually checked that. Surprisingly, cash registers seem to start from around 1890, more thnn 250 years after those early 1600s adding machines (and half a century after Babbage), NOT before them.

[cantata.tech]

The word "accumulator" also has similar roots.

Not that I can see, it uses a different root particle.

"Accumulator" uses the root particle "sum" as c and s are interchangeable so that Accumulator can also be pronounced as "A+sum+ulator".

"Sum" makes contextual sense.

Sum means a) "A central idea or point"
                  b) The utmost degree (or utmost register)
                  c) An arithmetic computation

These root particle meanings are older than the Roman Empire or the Latin language, although it will be claimed by 'some' [a countable quantity] that these words are all Latin derived.