Why is analysis called "analysis"? Just as the topic says, how did the name "analysis" come to denote the specific mathematical branch dealing with limits and stuff? The term "analysis" seems very generic compared to the words for the other two main branches, "algebra" and "geometry", which do not seem to have other unrelated meanings.

The first occurrence (1696) of the term "analysis" in the sense of the mathematical discipline extending calculus occurs in the title of l'Hopital's work Analyse des Infiniment Petits pour l'Intelligence des Lignes Courbes. The term had been used earlier as part of a dichotomy analysis/synthesis, for example in Fermat. However l'Hopital was the first to use the term to describe the new science being created by Leibniz and others in the 17th century.
