The term was coined by the programmers at MIT's Project MAC. They took the name from Maxwell's demon, an imaginary being from a thought experiment that constantly works in the background, sorting molecules. Unix systems inherited this terminology. Maxwell's demon is consistent with Greek mythology's interpretation of a daemon as a supernatural being working in the background, with no particular bias towards good or evil. However, BSD and some of its derivatives have adopted a Christian demon as their mascot rather than a Greek daemon.