Depends on who you ask and when you ask it.
 
Microsoft has stated it stands for "New Technology." Some think it actually stands for "Intel". Still others think they just took OS (as in OS/2) and incremented the letters by one. The most common response is "New Troubles."

I've also heard, NT=No Technology

I always thought it stood for Network Technologies in NT and New Technologies in win2000. Im probably wayyy off though. Just do a search on the net im sure youll find some suitably geeky jokes about it

Take OS/2 and increment the letters by 1.... PT/2 ? You've got that a lil muddled
 
The increment comes from VMS -> WNT, as a main developer for NT worked on VMS earlier, or so the story goes.
 
Oh and if it stood for anything in 2K, doesn't it sound a bit weird when you read the splash screen at the start? "Built on New Technology Technology" - just a thought!
 
Personaly I believe the VMS -> WNT explanation, then MS declared officialy it stood for nothing and then later adopted the medias explaination of New Technology... similar thing with Matrix Manipulation eXtensions becomming Multi-Media eXtenstions. The media has a lot to answer for heh.

Strange duplicate.. (edited out).

Yep, Cynan, you're right. I'll blame it on a brain fart and leave it at that. Must have been because of a discussion I had recently about OS/2 Warp with someone at work.

It all seems a little silly to me,
 
Sure if it stood for something significant, but just adding NT or XP after the word 'Windows' because the letters look good together, well that what it seems like anyway.
 
I mean what are they going to call the next OS?
 
They should stick to the year numbering, Windows95 Windows98 Windows2000 [Windows02 or Windows2002], ect.. at least it is systematic and makes sense. Besides i reckon the year extension looks better that two letters which seem to represent no or little meaning.
 
Hey, just a thought,

Problem with that date system like windows95/98/2000 and so on is that it kinda makes it look old before its time. Even though they are still perfectly good. Hard to explain but you must know what i mean

Years is better than names but version # are the best.
 
NT 3.51=>4.0->5.0->5.1 and when ya see the ver of the files it's all right there underneath.
 
Windows NT 5.1 sounds alot cooler to me than Windows XP. ;(

Those version numbers really reveal what windows xp really is
 
Win2000 - version 5
winXP - version 5.1
 
Not much of a change for a new OS

NT = No Trouble.

NT = Nice Try
NT = Next Time

I know this is old news now, but I found this from a previous topic about this in my saves messages, so I thought I'd post it..
 

Quote:The official word from MS at one time was that it stood for "New Technology".  
Which was pretty funny, since it has very strong roots in the internals of DEC's VMS, the keel for which was laid in 1976 or so... pre[censored] Windows (non-NT, non-9x) and even MS-DOS by quite a few years, and still (many major releases that did NOT involve name changes, only "honest" version numbers, later) easily the most reliable general-purpose, production-grade OS available.
 
(It's not difficult to keep a VMScluster up for YEARS, sailing right through complete replacement/upgrades of all hardware, OS upgrades through both minor and major revs, etc., and maintain service to clients the whole time. Tandem's "NonStop" OS, long since also absorbed by Compaq, can do the same, but I don't consider it "general purpose"; it is too focused on transaction processing and database access.)
 
It was fun to go around pointing out that if you take "VMS" and advance each letter by one place in the alphabet, VMS => WNT. i.e. WNT = VMS + 1. David Cutler swore this was accidental and that if they'd noticed it early enough they'd have changed it.
 
David Cutler also was one of the principal designers and coders for THREE other OS's at DEC, RSX-11M, (then VMS), ELN, and Mica - the last one never shipped, which is why he was annoyed and available for hiring by MS to build their new OS. Full story on this is in an interesting little book called Showstopper. And yes, Mica looked sort of halfway between VMS and NT in its design. Considering that most of us never get to design even one OS from scratch, the man is definitely over his quota...
 
Why wasn't Win2K called Windows NT Version 5? Well, fact is that a company called Northern Telecom (now Nortel Communictaions) owned the trademark "NT" for use on computer and communications equipment (it's even their stock symbol). They licensed it to MS for a while. Might have gotten fairly confusing, too, since it seems they were using NT4 as the core for some of their phone products, so you had an NT (Northern Telecom) switch running NT (the operating system)... Anyway, one story is that they eventually decided to either not renew the name license to MS at all or to charge too much, so MS said "fine, we'll call our OS something else." Another is that "it was a marketing decision". I'm not sure whom to believe.

Quote:Why wasn't Win2K called Windows NT Version 5? Well, fact is that a company called Northern Telecom (now Nortel Communictaions) owned the trademark "NT" for use on computer and communications equipment (it's even their stock symbol). They licensed it to MS for a while. Might have gotten fairly confusing, too, since it seems they were using NT4 as the core for some of their phone products, so you had an NT (Northern Telecom) switch running NT (the operating system)... Anyway, one story is that they eventually decided to either not renew the name license to MS at all or to charge too much, so MS said "fine, we'll call our OS something else." Another is that "it was a marketing decision". I'm not sure whom to believe.

But wouldn't that mean the tagline "Built on NT technology" would mean Northern Telecom technology?