How did Uzi get its name?

The man who designed the Uzi did not want it called the Uzi.

He was born Gotthard Glas in Weimar, Germany, on 15 December 1923. By 1936 he was living at Kibbutz Yagur, and as a teenager he joined the Haganah.

In 1943 the British caught him carrying a bag of guns. He was sentenced to seven years in Acre Prison and was pardoned in July 1946. In the early 1950s he took a Hebrew name, Uziel Gal.

After the 1948 war, Gal and another designer, Chaim Kara, were tasked with creating a new submachine gun for Israel's army. Each produced a prototype in 1951, and the army put Gal's through its first trials. Wikipedia's article on the gun says it was officially adopted that year. Gal patented it in 1952, and it reached Israeli special forces in 1954.

The army named it after him. According to Wikipedia, Gal did not want the weapon to carry his name, but his request was ignored. The short form of his first name became one of the best-known weapon names in the world. Dictionary.com dates the English word to 1955-60 and traces it directly to "Uzi(el) Gal, Israeli army officer who designed it."

The name itself is ancient. Easton's Bible Dictionary lists six men called Uzziel in the Hebrew Bible. It gives the meaning "strength of God." Strong's Concordance glosses it "my strength is God." It joins Hebrew 'oz, "strength," with El, "God."

The gun first saw combat in the 1956 Suez Campaign. The name later spread to smaller versions, the Mini Uzi in 1980 and the Micro Uzi in 1986. More than two million have been built.

Gal retired from the army as a lieutenant colonel in 1975 and moved to the United States in 1976. He died on 7 September 2002 and was buried at Yagur.