"Unix was named (phonetically) by bwk. I don't think he ever spelled it, but, since it was a play on multics, he thought it was unics. (you can ask him)

at the time, unix was compiled on the central computer at bell labs (GE-635) that produced a PDP--7 paper tape. usuallly i just ran the tape and threw it away. when i needed to save a tape, i wrote "unix" on the tape. it stuck after that.