[goochphd]

I love the creativity that goes into naming these projects in the geosciences! I've been a part of several of these projects myself, and have used data and collaborated with teams from many more.

One point of clarification: GNSS is a term that has broader application than you describe, as it encompasses constellations from other countries and political associations as well. For example:

* Galileo - European Union's GNSS system, named after the astronomer * BeiDou - China's GNSS system * GLONASS - Russia's GNSS system * JAXA - Japan's GNSS system

One backronym that I liked from my time doing my PhD was RELAMPAGO, which is a Spanish word for "lightning," but which some group of scientists gave this definition: "Remote sensing of Electrification, Lightning, And Mesoscale/microscale Processes with Adaptive Ground Observations". It was a very cool campaign that produced a ton of amazing data, and catalyzed many dissertations (including one of my close friend's).

[beerandt]

GPS was the more generic term until US Navstar-GPS became such the default that it aquired the generic term. And eventually dropped the Navstar, officially.

Sort of a reverse Xerox/Google/Velcro situation.