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C++ is an object-oriented programming language based on C, developed by Bjarne Stroustrup at Bell Labs in the 1980s. It was finally standardized in 1998 (ISO/IEC 14882-1998 "Information Technology - Programming Languages - C++"). In addition to its support for object-oriented programming, C++ is distinguished from C by its support for generic programming and template metaprogramming through the use of templates.

The name of the language, written "C++" and pronounced "see plus plus", signifies the fact that the language evolved from C. It was suggested by Rick Mascitti in mid-1983, about the time the language was first used outside a research organization. Earlier the language had been referred to simply as "C with Classes".

The name is an inspired pun, which plays on an idiom of C (where the double plus sign is an operator that has the effect of incrementing the value of a variable) along with the common naming convention of appending a single plus to indicate an enhanced version. According to Stroustrup: " '++' is the C increment operator...the name signifies the evolutionary nature of the changes from C". Employing the pun also avoided the problem that "C+" had already been used for an unrelated language (not to mention that it is commonly associated with an evaluation of less than stellar academic performance).