Full name of root account in BSD

NetBSD now has a users(7) and groups(7) manual. Looking into what entries existed in the passwdand groupfiles I wondered about root’s full name who we now know as Charlie Root in the BSDs.

Root was called Ernie Co-vax in 3BSD. An Ernie Kovacs also shows up in adduser(8). The 4.4BSD System Manager’s Manual mentions “at Berkeley we have machines named Ernie (Co-VAX), Kim (No-VAX)”.

Charlie Root in 4.2BSD.

actually 4.1c, but the entries differ:

root::0:10:Charlie,458E,7750:/:/bin/csh in 4.1c
root::0:10:Charlie &:/:/bin/csh in 4.2

The ampersand is replace by a capitalised login name, hence Charlie Root

The Man in 2.10BSD.