> Missed opportunity to call it copperhead.

I was thinking on Ruston, I really like it and it's a word play with "a ton of rust" :)

Rust is specifically the name for iron oxide. Technically speaking, copper doesn't "rust". It oxidizes.

Sure but that's still only two levels of separation from rust, so probably good enough for a pun.

And technically iron oxide is already removed from the "true name": according to Graydon's recollection[0] it was named after the fungi[1].

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/27jvdt/internet_archa...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_(fungus)

This is not only an English thing. In Italian rust is ruggine and those fungi in Italian are ruggine too.

How interesting. I learned of the fungus just a few days ago when I found it on a houseplant of mine. That's a fun connection.

The fungus looks a lot like pest eggs, so it was a relative relief to discover.

Sure, just thinking of the rusty brown color

Verdigris is the copper equivalent of rust.

Or, if it also contained an implementation of a Rails-workalike, Iron Snake [1]. Sometimes I want to start a project just to use a neat name I happened to come up with.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Snake