The original project name was "Monad", but once it was nearing release, it got into the hands of the notorious naming prodigies in Microsoft marketing. Then it got changed to Microsoft Shell (MSH) and finally to Windows PowerShell. Great times.

It did not get changed.

Windows Powershell is up until 5.1 because it runs ONLY on Windows.

Powershell 6 was named Powershell Core due to being built with .NET Core. It was not fully compatible with 5.1 and lacked some functions based on the WinApi.

PowerShell 7 is still built on .NET Core, but has a much better compatibility with 5.1. They dropped Core because nobody cared and it's shorter and works equally well on all platforms.

So Powershell is the v7 and Windows Powershell is the old 5.1. Nowhere is that confusing.

Also worth noting that PowerShell is completely independent from Windows now. Not only can you install it in almost every other platform, since it's .NET you can embed the runtime in any .NET application. It's incredibly powerful.

> since it's .NET you can embed the runtime in any .NET application

not actually "embedded", more like a bit of shim code that extracts the runtime into some temporary directory that then runs the actual code.

Not sure what you mean? I've hosted powershell in C# code by referencing Microsoft.Powershell.Sdk - it pulls in the dll at compile time and runs on whatever .Net runtime that is installed and matches the project target.