English mnemonics to Vim's shortcuts

Question

I realize that Vim's main author is Dutch, so I'll settle for those as well. I'm interested, do Vim's "control keys" have equivalents in the english language? You know, Ctrl-O for Open, Ctrl-N for New and so on.

Some of Vim's "control keys" could be assigned some meanings

(a) append / (i) insert
(w) word / b (back one word)

These are just those that I thought off the top of my head.

Do they all have some meaning (:e ?)

I find it much easier to remember them if I know they mean something; they're not just randomly used keys.

Answer 1

In normal mode:

• a: append
• b: beginning (of current or previous word)
• c: change
• d: delete
• e: end (of current word)
• f: find (next given character on current line)
• g: go (used as "leader" for many commands)
• h: left (only makes sense on the keyboard used by vi's author, same for jkl)
• i: insert
• j: down
• k: up
• l: right
• m: mark
• n: next (occurrence of last search)
• o: open (new line below current line)
• p: put (paste)
• q: quote? (record a macro in given register)
• r: replace
• s: substitute
• t: toward (next given character on current line)
• u: undo
• v: (enter) visual mode
• w: (next) word
• x: x-out (delete a single character)
• y: yank
• z: fold (it's visual, it looks like a folded sheet of paper)

Answer 2

Some do. Check out this cheatsheet, it has a lot of mnemonics:

http://michael.peopleofhonoronly.com/vim/

Some of the more obvious ones:

• y = yank
• c = change
• O = over
• f = find
• r = replace
• u = undo
• t = unTil character

Answer 3

My mnemonic for ^ (go to beginning of line): ^ looks like a roof, roof symbolizes home. Home key moves your cursor to the start of line/document.

Look at ADM-3A keyboard layout: the Home key is used to print ^ and ~ symbols.