I can't believe this hasn't been asked before, but I can't find it on SE — or even on the googletron.
What does "Etc" mean in time zone definitions?
Example: php's
date_default_timezone_set('Etc/GMT');1 Answer
The zone identifiers starting with "Etc/..." come from TZDB-repository maintained by Paul Eggert and hosted by IANA. There is following private non-official github-based repository (labelled as experimental but can be considered as preparing repository for TZDB):
There you will find an etcetera-file. The zone identifiers mentioned above are available in this file. So the answer is:
"Etc" stands for "et cetera" (latin for "and so forth").
About the motivation of such naming, I think it is best to directly ask the maintainer of TZDB-repository Paul Eggert on the IANA-mailing-list.
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