[OT] "normal" (as in "Guassian")

On Mon, Mar 3, 2008 at 8:25 AM, Duncan Murdoch  
<murdoch at stats.uwo.ca> wrote:

On 3/3/2008 9:10 AM, Rogers, James A [PGRD Groton] wrote:

As someone of partly French heritage, I would also ask how this
distribution came to be called "Gaussian". It seems very unfair to  
de
Moivre, who discovered the distribution at least half a century  
earlier.
:-)

Just an example of Stigler's Law.

Taking this to a whole new level of "off topic", I wonder if Stigler's
Law is self-referential?  That is, should Stigler's Law more correctly
be attributed to someone else?

On Mar 2, 2008, at 7:33 AM, (Ted Harding) wrote:

Hi Folks,
Apologies to anyone who'd prefer not to see this query
on this list; but I'm asking because it is probably the
forum where I'm most likely to get a good answer!

I'm interested in the provenance of the name "normal
distribution" (for what I'd really prefer to call the
"Gaussian" distribution).

According to Wikipedia, "The name "normal distribution"
was coined independently by Charles S. Peirce, Francis
Galton and Wilhelm Lexis around 1875."

So be it, if that was the case -- but I would like to
know why they chose the name "normal": what did they
intend to convey?

As background: I'm reflecting a bit on the usage in
statistics of "everyday language" as techincal terms,
as in "significantly different". This, for instance,
is likely to be misunderstood by the general publidc
when they encounter statements in the media.

Likewise, "normally distributed" would probably be
interpreted as "distributed in the way one would
normally expect" or, perhaps, "there was nothing
unusual about the distribution."

Comments welcome!
With thanks,
Ted.