Re: [OT] Is "Authentification" a Real Word?

From: Alun Jones (alun@texis.com)
Date: 04/26/02 

From: alun@texis.com (Alun Jones)
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2002 19:20:53 GMT

In article <3CC99519.C8078347@sgi.com>, Casey Schaufler <casey@sgi.com> wrote:
>The term was coined by Ana Maria De Alvare while at
>Lawrence Livermore Labs, and popularized through her
>work with the POSIX P1003.6 standards development group.
>I hadn't heard it for some time.

My previous post was, of course, a joke. But it's clear there's a lot of
people using "authentification" where "authentication" will do.

As with most neologisms, it's important to determine whether the word is
really necessary - as far as I can see, even if you were to consider it a new
word, there's no difference in meaning between authentification and
authentication, and the only other difference is that it's an extra syllable,
and use of the word will reduce others' opinion of you, because they'll think
you're simply making the same kind of muck-up as turns "oriented" into
"orientated".

Unless, that is, Ms De Alvare has a different meaning for authentification
than authentication already possesses, and if that's the case, then I still
have a beef, in that it's a really bad idea to use two similar (and often
confused) words for concepts in the same field.

But then, she's in frequent company - a search on "Authentification" gives
such places as:

<http://www.netscape.co.uk/help/faqs/technical/tsauthentificationfailed.htm>
(Documentification of an error message that includes the term)

<http://www.microsoft.com/serviceproviders/webhosting/ias.asp> (the
mis-spelling is in the page's title)

<http://www.cs.ucl.ac.
uk/brandnew/research2/authentification_mechanisms_project_summary.htm> (a
University project funded by Tirith Belecom)

The number of matches to French web pages suggests that "authentification" is
a French word, which would be unsurprising.

Alun.
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