I can only imagine that some papers start off with the name of software tool that they want to use, and then work backwards to form an acronym or initialism. After exhausting valid combinations — where the letters are derived from the initial letters of each word — they switch to plucking letters at random. All that matters is coming up with a fun word or phrase for your tool, right?

And so that brings us to MATE-CLEVER, a new tool described in the latest issue of the journal Bioinformatics. The article title at least provides a hint for where the 'M' comes from:

MATE-CLEVER: Mendelian-inheritance-aware discovery and genotyping of midsize and long indels

The fact that the title of the paper includes no words beginning with 'T', 'E', 'C', 'V', or 'R' makes me a little bit afraid as to just where these letters will come from. Ready for this? MATE-CLEVER is derived from:

Mendelian-inheritance-AtTEntive CLique-Enumerating Variant findER

This is a particularly egregious use of selectively choosing the letters to fit your desired name, and for that feat this paper becomes a recipient of yet another JABBA award.

Update 2014-03-18 14.10: The more I look at this name, the more I think they missed the opportunity to name it 'MEAT-CLEAVER'.