A high-level programming language developed by Sun Microsystems. Java was originally called OAK, and was designed for handheld devices and set-top boxes. Oak was unsuccessful so in 1995 Sun changed the name to Java and modified the language to take advantage of the burgeoning World Wide Web. The name Java was coined at a local coffee shop frequented by some of the members. It is not clear whether the name is an acronym for Just Another Vague Acronym as some claim, or as some accounts have it that it stands for the initials of the names of the architects of Java technology namely, James Gosling, Arthur Van Hoff, and Andy Bechtolsheim.

Java is an object-oriented language similar to C++, but simplified to eliminate language features that cause common programming errors. Java is a general purpose programming language with a number of features that make the language well suited for use on the World Wide Web. Small Java applications are called Java applets and can be downloaded from a Web server and run on your computer by a Java-compatible Web browser, such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Swing, which is platform independent widget toolkit, is immortalized in the package names for the Swing API that provides a graphical user interface (GUI) for Java programs and is represented with javax.swing. Swing was the code name of the project that developed the new components. As the Internet was becoming popular as a way of moving media content -- text, graphics, video -- throughout a network of heterogeneous devices using HTML; Java technology was designed in parallel to move media content across networks of heterogeneous devices, but it also offered the capability to move "behavior" in the form of applets along with the content. HTML alone could not do that, but it did set the stage for Java technology.

Reference:
http://www.fact-index.com/j/ja/java_platform.html