… when I saw something I never heard before. Another “recursive backronym”:
MATE = MATE Advanced Traditional Environment
Based on Google hits, it’s not all that old or widespread. And doesn’t appear at all on mate-desktop.org that I can find.
So… I still don’t know. MATE or Mate? 
Hi Bill,
it is written in upper-case on their Wiki:
Hi @wolfman,
And upper-case is used by mate-desktop.org but I failed to mention how i was reasoning the backronym actually makes it proper. Like GNU (GNU’s Not Unix). And UNIX is a trademark but Unix is not. 
It’s like GNOME vs Gnome. 
One of them is a garden accessory.
Probably the all uppercase one is the original as it’s a backronym that @Bill_MI points out . Also, it’s represented everywhere as Ubuntu MATE officially, but some sites put Ubuntu Mate… but we still understand what they’re referring to.
Disclaimer: I don’t represent GNOME or MATE for official clarity.
What does everyone else think?
0 voters
I am lazy when I write it so I use “Mate”. 
It is MATE for no other reason than Desktop Environment names are all caps by convention. As for the backronym, that was created outside the MATE project a year or so ago by a friend of mine ️
How about another candidate, like “Capitalization doesn’t matter to me”?
Thanks for confirming it’s relatively new. I found it on Wikipedia but nowhere on mate-desktop.org or ubuntu-mate.community (except this thread).
Blame Joe Ressington ️
