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

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