Ultimately the answer is it is not a reserved keyword, you should be safe in using java
as a variable name.
But as noted on http://www.javascripter.net/faq/reserved.htm it states that java
is one of the words that should have been reserved words. And I believe the reasoning he is referring too is for Java Applet integration.
It is hard to find references of this on the web because the technology is largely deprecated. It appears that up until Firefox 16 Mozilla included Globals for Packages
, java
, and netscape
(See 2.1.5 Deprecated Functionality: the Global Packages, java and netscape Keywords)
The only bits of this I could find are referenced in Mozilla's LiveConnect Documentation where you can see in Java in Firefox Extensions First the note
Note: The global java object has been removed in Gecko 16.0, so this page is out of date
And then the sample code block:
var aJavaList = new java.util.LinkedList();
So basically before Mozilla had deprecated the global java
object (and possibly applets were on the page?), this could have been a problem.