HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language — a markup language for structuring documents, not a programming language.

A markup language wraps content in special labels called tags (the "markup") to describe what each piece of content is — "this is a heading", "this is a paragraph" — rather than giving step-by-step commands. That makes it declarative (you describe the desired structure) rather than imperative (you spell out actions). For example, <h1>Title</h1> simply declares "Title is a top-level heading", and the browser decides how to render it; an imperative language like JavaScript would instead say "set the font size, make it bold, then display it".

A bit of history helps it stick:

• HTML was created at CERN (the European particle-physics lab) in the late 1980s by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web.
• Its roots reach back to SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) from the 1960s, the grandparent of tag-based document formats.
• The core idea has always been to structure information — into titles, headings, paragraphs, lists, blocks, and so on.

Memory tip: the "HyperText" half is what makes HTML special — text that can link to other documents, the foundation of the Web.

Go deeper:

• HTML — Wikipedia — overview of HTML's history, Berners-Lee/CERN origins, and SGML roots.

The WHATWG — the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group — maintains HTML today, having taken over from the W3C.

For years two bodies were involved: the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) published versioned HTML standards, while the WHATWG, a group founded by browser makers, pushed a faster-moving approach. The WHATWG eventually became the single authority, and it publishes the HTML Living Standard at https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/.

The phrase "living standard" is the key idea: instead of releasing fixed numbered versions (HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, and so on), the spec is continuously updated in place. Browsers track these changes as they happen.

• Some related topics get their own separate specifications — for example AAM (Accessibility API Mappings), ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications, which adds accessibility hints), and various HTML Extensions.
• The W3C still maintains an overview page at https://www.w3.org/standards/techs/html.

Tip: people still casually say "HTML5", but technically there is no ongoing version number anymore — it is just "HTML" as a living standard.

Go deeper:

• HTML Living Standard — WHATWG — the primary source itself, continuously updated in place (note the "Last Updated" date at the top).