Why did the Android Parcel Project choose the word Parcel?

Question

I'm just wondering how the word parcel was chosen for the Android Parcel Project. I first saw the project in the Advanced Android Coders Cookbook and went onto google searching for Android Parcels, the top results shows the main problem with the name: Android has a class called Parcel.

I was just wondering why this was chosen in spite of this, and why not some robot related like Gear or Part. That would be similar to the the word Gem that was chosen for Ruby.

Answer 1

android.os.Parcel

Container for a message (data and object references) that can be sent through an IBinder...

The project provides the Parcel class which is used to contain stuff. Real life parcels are also used to contain stuff. The reason they didn't call it gear or part is because those are functional objects rather than containers.