Please allow me to ask a potentially dumb question (or maybe more precisely, a question floating on clouds of ignorance):



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> Why is a max-plus algebra called a *tropical algebra*?
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What's tropical about tropical algebra?
A lot of sources mention that the adjective "tropical" is given in honor of Imre Simon, but it seems hard to find who precisely coined the term. I found some sources which attribute this to some French mathematicians. [Here](http://bit-player.org/2009/treats-tropiques) is what Bryan Hayes writes on the topic:



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> For starters, what is that word “tropical” supposed to mean? [Speyer and Sturmfels](http://arxiv.org/abs/math/0408099) explain: “The adjective tropical was coined by French mathematicians, including Jean-Eric Pin, in honor of their Brazilian colleague Imre Simon.” Pin, in a 1998 paper ([.pdf](http://www.liafa.jussieu.fr/~jep/PDF/tropical.pdf)), deflects the credit to another French mathematician, Dominique Perrin, again noting that the name honors “the pioneering work of our brazilian colleague and friend Imre Simon.” Simon himself, in a 1988 paper ([.ps](http://www.ime.usp.br/~is/papir/rmts.ps)), attributes the term to yet a third French mathematician, Christian Choffrut. Apparently, no one wants to lay claim to the word, and I can’t entirely blame them. Speyer and Sturmfels go on: “There is no deeper meaning in the adjective ‘tropical’. It simply stands for the French view of Brazil.”
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