The most simply-named product names can sometimes have the most surprising of origins.
Behind two of the world’s most widely-used database management systems lies a story of family, open-source idealism, and corporate resistance—all encoded in the names themselves. MySQL and MariaDB, powering countless websites and applications from Facebook to WordPress, are named after the two daughters of Finnish developer Michael “Monty” Widenius: My and Maria. What began as a personal naming choice for MySQL in the 1990s became a statement of continuity and defiance when Widenius created MariaDB two decades later.
The MySQL Story
MySQL—pronounced “my-ess-cue-ell”—combines the name of Widenius’s daughter My with SQL, the acronym for Structured Query Language. As a co-founder of MySQL AB, the Swedish company behind the database, Widenius helped create one of the most successful open-source projects in computing history. Released under the GNU General Public License, MySQL became a cornerstone of web infrastructure and a key component of the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/PHP/Python) that powered the early internet boom.
The database’s adoption was staggering. By the 2000s, MySQL was running behind major platforms including Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and MediaWiki. Its combination of reliability, performance, and zero licensing cost made it the default choice for database-driven web applications.
The Oracle Acquisition
In 2008, Sun Microsystems acquired MySQL AB. Two years later, Oracle Corporation purchased Sun, bringing MySQL under the control of the company behind the dominant commercial database, Oracle Database. For Widenius and much of the open-source community, this created an uncomfortable conflict of interest: Oracle now owned both a premium commercial database and its most threatening open-source competitor.
Widenius feared that Oracle might close-source MySQL or let the project stagnate, eliminating a key alternative in the database market. These concerns weren’t merely theoretical—open-source advocates worried that Oracle’s stewardship would prioritize its commercial interests over the community’s needs.
The Birth of MariaDB
In 2010, Widenius exercised the nuclear option available in open-source software: he forked MySQL’s codebase. The new project was named MariaDB, after his younger daughter Maria. The naming choice was both sentimental and symbolic—a continuation of the family legacy that had begun with MySQL, and a declaration that the original vision would persist regardless of corporate ownership.
Development was led by many of the original MySQL developers through Monty Program AB, the company Widenius founded to steward the project. MariaDB was designed to maintain high compatibility with MySQL, matching its APIs and commands to function as a drop-in replacement while pursuing independent development of new features and storage engines like Aria, ColumnStore, and MyRocks.
The project’s logo—a sea lion—was chosen by Widenius while snorkeling with Maria in the Galápagos Islands, adding another layer of family connection to the database’s identity.
Legacy and Impact
Today, both MySQL and MariaDB remain active, with MariaDB adopted by major organizations seeking an Oracle-independent path forward. Linux distributions including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE, and Debian have replaced MySQL with MariaDB as their default database system. The MariaDB company went public in 2023 before being acquired by private equity firm K1 Investment Management in 2024.
The parallel stories of MySQL and MariaDB illustrate how open-source licensing can preserve software freedom even when commercial ownership changes hands. But they also reveal something more personal: sometimes the most technically sophisticated software in the world carries the simplest of inspirations—a father’s love for his daughters, encoded permanently into the infrastructure of the internet.