The 'Java' part was due to marketing push on the part of Netscape. At the time Java was already well established and 'LiveScript" didn't quite have the same re

The 'Java' part was due to marketing push on the part of Netscape. At the time Java was already well established and 'LiveScript" didn't quite have the same recognition. What's more, originally Brendan Eich modeled this new language on the concepts in Self and Lisp. But again, the marketing PHB's forced him to adopt a curly bracket notation like that of C, C++ and Java. Furthermore, Java is a compiled language, whilst JavaScript is an interpreted language (with lots of JIT tricks in some implementations, e.g. V8). Once you start digging deeper you'll notice that other than the superficial similarity due to the curly bracket, C-derived syntax, they are extremely different languages. Even the "class based" and "prototype based" core paradigms are very different. Of course, with Java being first, a lot of folks are trying to force JavaScript to be like Java, e.g. writing code with classes - which is a kludge at the best of time.