Ask Lemmy

The quark flavors were given their names for several reasons. The up and down quarks are named after the up and down components of isospin, which they carry.[60] Strange quarks were given their name because they were discovered to be components of the strange particles discovered in cosmic rays years before the quark model was proposed; these particles were deemed "strange" because they had unusually long lifetimes.[61] Glashow, who co-proposed the charm quark with Bjorken, is quoted as saying, "We called our construct the 'charmed quark', for we were fascinated and pleased by the symmetry it brought to the subnuclear world."[62] The names "top" and "bottom", coined by Harari, were chosen because they are "logical partners for up and down quarks".[41][42][61] Alternative names for top and bottom quarks are "truth" and "beauty",[nb 4] but these names have somewhat fallen out of use.[66] While "truth" never did catch on, accelerator complexes devoted to massive production of bottom quarks are sometimes called "beauty factories".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark

I bet it was a shitty placeholder name

Yep, quarks are spin-1/2 particles. They also have electric charge and color charge (strong nuclear force).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark