How did the Liskov substitution principle get its name, according to Barbara Liskov?

Barbara Liskov told Ryan Peterman she never named it herself. She described the idea in a keynote around 1986, and only in the 1990s, after the internet arrived, did she get an email asking whether a certain interpretation of 'the Liskov substitution principle' was correct. That message is how she learned the name existed, and how she realised the idea had become important.

• Liskov says she had moved on to other research and was not following how the idea spread.
• The formal version came later in a paper on behavioral subtyping with Jeannette Wing.

▸In their words

“That's when I discovered that there was such a name.” Barbara Liskov · at 7:59 — open in the transcript →

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on Ryan Peterman (2026-10-28). Read the whole episode summary →

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