As far I can see, there are several rumors for the missing n, like the one you mentioned. However, I did not find any evidence for the correct story behind.

but a lot of IT people actually use "grep" as a verb meaning "look through a file for mentions of a specific piece of text", like i might say "let me grep for this function", as in "let me look where this function's name is mentioned in the source code"

DD because it's a funny reference to OS/360

AWK because the author initials

Excel because it's a excellent Visicalc

Edge because browsers are edgy

Safari because the internet is a jungle

Warning - the video shows these things, but there is a lot of typical you-tube babbling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeL3mbq1mEg

(Actually, last time I made a comment about this I was told that the reason was that very very early Unixes limited command lengths to 6 characters. There are two interpretations of the word “backward” in the phrase “backward compatibility”.)

@kamstrup

But they were also more gentle times when people were actually paid to write useful documentation and the man pages were actually helpful