Answers.Body: <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>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2021-03-16T12:58:58.363Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2021-03-16T12:58:58.363Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: brazofuerte
Body: <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>
  
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2021-03-16T17:50:34.040Z
Comments.Text: 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).
Comments.UserDisplayName: nbro
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2023-05-14T10:25:35.167Z
Comments.Text: @nbro: Would you mind asking the authors why they have chosen the name "Transformer"? I am curious, too.
Comments.UserDisplayName: Hans-Peter Stricker
Tags: <neural-networks><terminology><transformer><attention>
Title: Why are "Transformers" called this way?
UserDisplayName: Leevo
ThreadText: # 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-username_0-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.  
  
  ---
  
  ## 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
  
  
  ---
  
  