What does "Stan" in "PHPStan" refer to/mean?

I found this the other day and have started using it: https://phpstan.org/ It's nice. But it really annoys me that nowhere does it explain/mention what "Stan" refers to.

  • It's not the name of the author.
  • It's not obviously (to me) related to analyzing programming code.
  • https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stan#English does not give me any clues.
  • I've searched online and looked through its entire website without finding any mention of the name.

You'd think that this page would mention it, but it really doesn't mention it anywhere on its entire website: https://phpstan.org/blog/find-bugs-in-your-code-without-writing-tests

Any ideas? I'm really annoyed by this and would love to know what it means.


The first blog post, introducing the tool, describes it as a "static analysis tool." I must assume that "STAN" is a portmanteau of "static" and "analysis." A little searching shows it used in other contexts that concern "structure analysis" as well.