The language was baptized Ada in reference to the woman who wrote the first embryonic computer program: Lady Ada Lovelace, daughter of the poet Lord Byron and friend of the English mathematician Charles Babbage, the 19th-century inventor of the Analytical Engine, a mechanical calculator.

Ichbiah left Honeywell-CII-Bull in 1980 to set up Alsys (Ada Language Systems). After selling that company to Thomson in 1991, he left for the U.S. to set up Textware Solutions, a vendor of rapid text entry systems.