The boojum was named by N. David Mermin of Cornell University in 1976. He was inspired by Lewis Carroll's poem The Hunting of the Snark. As in the poem, the appearance of a boojum can cause something (in this case, the supercurrent) to "softly and suddenly vanish away".
The boojum was named by N. David Mermin of Cornell University in 1976, drawing parallels with Lewis Carroll's poem The Hunting of the Snark, where a similar phenomenon causes something to disappear suddenly.