Possible Duplicate:
Why “class” for class in Java?
I was thinking about type classes in Haskell, which allow you to separate types into different groups based on the operations you can perform on them. But why are classes called classes in C++? What were they originally meant to classify?
Because they were called “classes” in Simula. Sources indicate that Simula was influenced by this proposal for “record classes” (i.e. structured data with associated type information) in Algol. Mostly every other language derived its OO terminology (directly or indirectly) from Simula.