Merge branch 'name-explanation' into 'master'

explain the name gitaly

See merge request !16

1 files changed, 15 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index bdb76df93..a0ebf7c10 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -1 +1,15 @@
-[This is not the README you are looking for](design/README.md)
+# Gitaly
+
+- [Reasoning and design of Gitaly](design/README.md)
+- [About the name Gitaly](#name)
+
+## Name
+
+Gitaly is a tribute to git and the town of [Aly][aly-wiki]. Where the town of
+Aly has zero inhabitants most of the year we would like to reduce the number of
+disk operations to zero for most actions. It doesn't hurt that it sounds like
+Italy, the capital of which is [the destination of all roads][rome]. All git actions in
+GitLab end up in Gitaly.
+
+[aly-wiki]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aly
+[rome]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_roads_lead_to_Rome