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Asked: 2026-05-15T12:37:30+00:00

I read recently (I can’t recall where, or I’d return to that source) that

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I read recently (I can’t recall where, or I’d return to that source) that the misspelling of HTTP header field name Referer in the specification was intentional. Is that accurate? If so, why?

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  1. Editorial Team

    Phillip Hallam-Baker and Roy Fielding are responsible for it. By the time they realized it was incorrect, too many people were using it.

    Now, Phillip jokes about getting the Oxford Dictionary to recognize his spelling:

    Its like when I did the referer field.
    I got nothing but grief for my choice
    of spelling. I am now attempting to
    get the spelling corrected in the OED
    since my spelling is used several
    billion times a minute more than
    theirs.

    Roy also joked about the fact that the UNIX spell command didn’t recognize any spelling of it:

    > Has anyone else noticed that the HTTP header "Referer:" is spelled
    wrong?

    That’s okay, neither one (referer or
    referrer) is understood by "spell"
    anyway. I say we should just blame it
    on France. 😉

    Info taken from HTTP_REFERER Origins Wikipedia article.

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