You can ask this question for most of unix. Why /etc? Why /bin and /usr/bin? (Answer: At one time hard disks were very small and crashed a lot), why do we presume screens are black and white, etc, etc.

Try to change any of it though, and a lot of luddites will come out screaming bloody murder. It's just not UNIX if it makes sense.

The origins of /etc are lost in history. Wikipedia [1] says that at Bell Labs /etc was pronounced "et caetera," and contained files that didn't belong elsewhere. And it had the advantage over conf or misc that it was only 3 letters.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_Hierarchy_Standard

Maybe the alternative was "..." :)

I'm guessing it's because /etc contains configuration files and dot-files are just configuration files. Or do you mean, why was /etc named etc?

For the latter, a lazy copy/paste from Wikipedia:

"There has been controversy over the meaning of the name itself. In early versions of the UNIX Implementation Document from Bell labs, /etc is referred to as the etcetera directory as this directory historically held everything that did not belong elsewhere (however, the FHS restricts /etc to static configuration files and may not contain binaries)."

I think they meant the latter. Why is it /etc instead of, perhaps more obvious, /config or /settings?

If it was meant for configuration - probably it would've been - /cfg /ini /set /opt /flg /arg /prm (params)

As someone said - naming things is the hardest!

my de-obfuscation attempt:

etc > e.t.c > edit to configure.

the .rc suffix has a nice history btw

What's the history of that?

Legacy of the runcom shell that let's you record sequence of commands.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run_commands