"The INTERCAL manual gives unusual names to all non-alphanumeric ASCII characters: single and double quotes are "sparks" and "rabbit ears" respectively. (The exception is the ampersand: as the Jargon File states, "what could be sillier?") The assignment operator ... is in INTERCAL a left-arrow, <-, referred to as "gets" and made up of an "angle" and a "worm"."
The names are a mix between the visual (* is 'star', and ; is 'semicolon') and the semantic (<> is 'not-equals', and ! is 'store'). Some are a mix (+! is 'plus-store').
Well, ++ is "increment" in C/C++. The glyphs themselves can be described "plus plus", but everybody calls it increment, because of what it does. Also "->" the arrow operator. Everyone calls it arrow, rather than "minus greater than". It makes sense to call the glyph or collection of glyphs by what they do, rather than spelling them out.
Arrow's still rather on the 'plus plus' side of things anyway - maybe not 'minus greater than', but generally describes the look of it. If one would call ++ 'increment', one should call -> 'field' or something similar, I suppose.
"The INTERCAL manual gives unusual names to all non-alphanumeric ASCII characters: single and double quotes are "sparks" and "rabbit ears" respectively. (The exception is the ampersand: as the Jargon File states, "what could be sillier?") The assignment operator ... is in INTERCAL a left-arrow, <-, referred to as "gets" and made up of an "angle" and a "worm"."