It was named "C" because its features were derived from an earlier language called "B". The language BCPL was developed by Martin Richards and lately a language B was developed in 1970 at Bell labs by Ken Thomsan for the first Unix system. Now the C language was developed by Dennis Ritchie in 1972 whose publication was made by Kernighan and Ritchie in 1978. The C language got its main ideas from BCPL through language B. The BCPL language was modified to develop B language and laterly when a new powerful language was developed making more modifications it was named C language -second alphabet of original language. Then more modifications were made and given the name C++ .