Big Endian vs. Little Endian

[Skyler]

My first question is,
Are the Big Endian vs. Little Endian systems named after the Big Endian vs. Little Endian Wars from Gulliver's Travels? For those who don't know what the Big Endian vs. Little Endian Wars are:

Basically, there was a line in the Lilliputian's Bible which read: "Beleivers should open their eggs at the convenient end". However, nobody knew which end was the convenient end. Then the Emperor's nephew cut his thumb while opening an egg from the big end. So, the Emperor outlawed the openeing of eggs from the big end. Those in favor of the new law were called Little Endians, and their opponents were called Big Endians. There was a war, and the Big Endians left and founded Brobdingnag.

Second question: If anybody here has played the Unnkulia series- Do you suppose the centrality of eggs was influenced by this passage?

[KiZ]

10 seconds of searching on wikipedia:

Discussion, background, etymology

The choice of big-endian vs. little endian has been the subject of flame wars. The very term big-endian comes from Jonathan Swift's satiric novel Gulliver’s Travels, where tensions are described in Lilliput and Blefuscu because a faction called the Big-endians prefer to crack open their soft-boiled eggs from the big end, contrary to Lilliputian royal edict.[3] The terms little-endian and endianness have a similar ironic intent.[4]

could have saved some effort ;)

[yetifoot]

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/ien/ien137.txt

[Skyler]

Hmm... I didn't see wikipedia when I searched for it...