<p>The authors of the original paper don't provide an explanation, but I suspect it's a combination of:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformers" rel="nofollow noreferrer">popular recognizable branding</a> (cf. BERT, DALL-E, Watson etc)</li>
<li>similarity to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_machine_translation" rel="nofollow noreferrer">[sequence] <strong>trans</strong>duction</a> / <strong>trans</strong>lation / <strong>transform</strong>ations generally</li>
</ul>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-03-16T12:58:58.363Z
2021-03-16T12:58:58.363Z
brazofuerte
<p>What is the reason behind the name &quot;Transformers&quot;, for Multi Head Self-Attention-based neural networks from <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762" rel="noreferrer">Attention is All You Need</a>?</p>
<p>I have been googling this question for a long time, and nowhere I can find any explanation.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-03-16T17:50:34.040Z
Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been [moved to chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/120926/discussion-on-question-by-leevo-why-are-transformers-called-this-way).
nbro
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-05-14T10:25:35.167Z
@nbro: Would you mind asking the authors why they have chosen the name "Transformer"? I am curious, too.
Hans-Peter Stricker
<neural-networks><terminology><transformer><attention>
Why are "Transformers" called this way?
Leevo
# Why are "Transformers" called this way?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2020-11-16)

What is the reason behind the name "Transformers", for Multi Head Self-Attention-based neural networks from [Attention is All You Need](https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762)?

I have been googling this question for a long time, and nowhere I can find any explanation.

**Tags:** neural-networks, terminology, transformer, attention

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been [moved to chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/120926/discussion-on-question-by-leevo-why-are-transformers-called-this-way).  
> **username_2**: @username_1: Would you mind asking the authors why they have chosen the name "Transformer"? I am curious, too.  

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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_3 on 2021-03-16. Score: 2

The authors of the original paper don't provide an explanation, but I suspect it's a combination of:

* [popular recognizable branding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformers) (cf. BERT, DALL-E, Watson etc)
* similarity to [[sequence] **trans**duction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_machine_translation) / **trans**lation / **transform**ations generally


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