The original developers of Skype were Niklas Zennström, from Sweden, and Janus Friis, from Denmark. The software itself was created by Estonians Ahti Heinla, Priit Kasesalu, and Jaan Tallinn.
In terms of the name, the work "Skype" is derived from "Sky peer-to-peer." This phrase was later abbreviated to the word "Skyper." However, some domain names related to the word were already taken, which led the founders to change the name to "Skype."