It always seemed logical to me; I never heard anyone actually "say" it (or write it) but it seemed logical that "ref" stood for "reference" and "h" stood for hy

It always seemed logical to me; I never heard anyone actually "say" it (or write it) but it seemed logical that "ref" stood for "reference" and "h" stood for hypertext - since links point to URI's and back then the only linkable resources were hypertext documents instead of server side scripts/CGI.