I suspect the first compilers were named that because they were making compilations of assembly routines, probably slightly modified/specialised to the rest of the routines.
Compilers still do that. Some of the input is your source,
but there's also "the compiler runtime" which is essentially a lot of extra routines that get spliced in, and probably "the language runtime" which gets similar treatment.
So compilers are still joining together parts, we've just mostly forgotten what crt or udiv.s are.
Linking and loading are more dubious names, but also they refer to specialised compilers that don't need to exist and probably shouldn't any more, so that may resolve itself over time.
The first compilers were called "translators". The first linker/loader (kinda, A-0 was a... strange tool, by modern standards) was actually called "compiler", precisely because of the generic meaning of the word "compile".
I suspect the first compilers were named that because they were making compilations of assembly routines, probably slightly modified/specialised to the rest of the routines.
Compilers still do that. Some of the input is your source, but there's also "the compiler runtime" which is essentially a lot of extra routines that get spliced in, and probably "the language runtime" which gets similar treatment.
So compilers are still joining together parts, we've just mostly forgotten what crt or udiv.s are.
Linking and loading are more dubious names, but also they refer to specialised compilers that don't need to exist and probably shouldn't any more, so that may resolve itself over time.