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    In this case, I think the Scala went with the better name of Some as opposed to None (not saying it's Scala's invention). Commented Jul 28, 2017 at 0:32
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    @AndresF. It goes back at least to ML which Odersky was definitely very familiar with. Commented Jul 28, 2017 at 3:17
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    @RobertHarvey If a Haskeller was using Maybe as a monad, they would likely use return and probably something like mzero instead of Nothing. When Just is used directly, usually Maybe isn't being used in monadic style at that point. Commented Jul 28, 2017 at 3:20
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    The historical precedent would have been the Option type. The designers of Haskell probably felt that foo x = Just x "read" better than foo x = Some x. Similarly, the definition data Maybe a = Just a | Nothing reads pretty well as "Maybe a is either Just a or it's Nothing". Some reads reasonably well there, but None doesn't for data Option a = Some a | None. Commented Jul 28, 2017 at 3:22
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    They are still alive. You can email people like Phil Wadler and Simon Peyton Jones and ask them. Or try the Haskell-Cafe mailing list. Commented Jul 28, 2017 at 3:23