Cassie-b

Yet Another Hierarchial Officious Oracle

It started out as Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web,” named after co-founder Jerry Yang.

The name is an acronym for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle,” but Yang and co-founder David Filo apparently looked up the word in the dictionary, and insist they selected the name because they liked the general definition of a yahoo: “rude, unsophisticated, uncouth.”

Today, both Yang and Filo maintain the title of “Chief Yahoo.”

The word was originally invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book, ”Gulliver’s Travels”.  In the book, it represents a peron who is repulsive in appearance and action and is barely human.