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I've just seen this on the Moodle site itself - I knew it was there somewhere!
It says 'The word Moodle was originally an acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment, which is mostly useful to programmers and education theorists.  It's also a verb that describes the process of lazily meandering through something, doing things as it occurs to you to do them, an enjoyable tinkering that often leads to insight and creativity. As such it applies both to the way Moodle was developed, and to the way a student or teacher might approach studying or teaching an online course. Anyone who uses Moodle is a Moodler.'
Pretty cool, huh?

Hi Ulrike,

I'll let Martin answer about whether the chicken or the egg was first, but at the Australian Moodle Gather two weeks ago, he did not mention the acronym but right away explained that moodle is a word from the 1930s that is a combination of the verbs "muze" and "doodle". Is the person attributed to first combining these words Barbara Ueland? Do you know the reference for that quote? Could you post a quote from her publications that uses/explains it?

Note: Australia is *not* yet the first country to use Moodle. Incredible as it may seem, there are more than a few Aussies who don't know about Moodle. In fact, New Zealand is probably the closest to being the first country to totally use Moodle. However, Vu Hung tells me Vietnam is ready to completely adopt Moodle and Thailand holds the record for the largest Moodle conference with 350 participants! And if the new pope adopts Moodle, who knows, in that one edict the Vatican could actually be the first 'nation'. In that case, we might switch to the Latin meaning of 'moodle', which by the way, is 'miroscripsi'.

Hi!

It's a verb in English but not very well known. I didn't know the 1934 book at the time but I had heard of the word even though it only appears in larger dictionaries.

When coming up with a name for my system I remember sitting down one evening trying to come up with a word that:

1. was an acronym (because I like hidden meanings)
2. was a word you could say easily
3. was not common on the internet (so searches could find it)
4. had a domain name free

I played around with words and whois for a few hours before finally deciding on Moodle and registered moodle.com. The fact that "moodle" actually had a meaning of its own which made sense was the main reason why it won over other combinations. The system has never had another name, although originally the M in Moodle was "Martin's" not "Modular".

(Art, was it you?)

No, Ulrike, but I like to act like I discovered Moodle and revealed it to all mankind! I do have a sort of a complex...

-- Art