What is the origin of the name 'master' as default branch name?

Question

I am seeing that the new name for the git default branch will be changed from master to main And that made me wonder:

• Where did that master name come from?

I did not find anything about it on the git documentation, and was wondering if somebody had some answers or some archives/anecdotes on this naming decision.

I'd like to trace the origin of the name.

Answer 1

As mentioned in the mailing list

• The first appearance of "master" in Git is in a CVS helper script by Linus, May 2005 (actually commit 3c4347c by Petr Baudis, Apr. 2005):
• Why is that branch called master? Probably because BitKeeper uses "master" for its main branch (with a master-slave terminology)

And from "Git Origin Story", Linus Torwalds used BitKeeper before switching and developing Git.

The result was "Allow overriding the default name of the default branch".