The name "quark" was coined by the American physicist Murray Gell-Mann in 1963. Gell-Mann drew inspiration for the name from a line in James Joyce's novel "Finnegans Wake," which reads, "Three quarks for Muster Mark!" The word "quark" caught Gell-Mann's attention because it sounded unusual and whimsical, fitting for the exotic and puzzling nature of the newly proposed particles.
When Gell-Mann discovered that there were three types of quarks, he assigned the names up, down, and strange to them. The choice of names was somewhat arbitrary and meant to reflect their distinct properties. The up quark was called so because it had a charge of +2/3, which was considered "more positive" than the down quark's charge of -1/3. The strange quark received its name due to its unexpected behavior in particle interactions compared to the up and down quarks.
It's worth noting that Gell-Mann initially considered the name "aces" for these particles but later settled on "quarks." The name "quark" has since become deeply ingrained in the field of particle physics and is now widely used to refer to these fundamental constituents of matter.