Tony Stark was seventeen when his first child was born.

What had started out as a robot he'd built for the 4th Annual MIT Robot Design Award the year before came alive with Tony's first forays into AI programming. It was a basic program, but that just made Tony love him even more. It took two years of upgrades, both in body and code, before he felt satisfied that he was learning and functioning properly. The bot was a bit of an idiot, but he was also a baby so Tony thought it was to be expected. That didn't stop him from calling him Dum-E though.

A week after Dum-E first came online, Tony received a call about his parents' deaths and spent the night in a drunken haze tucked against his son.

Tony Stark was twenty when his second child was born.

U was modeled both in form and code after Dum-E, though the latter was modified slightly to ensure they'd have a separate personality from their older brother. They might have gotten their name during a drunken episode of Tony's. If they had, then they'd refused to let him change it.

Tony Stark was twenty-five when the man who raised him died, and when his third child was named after him.

J.A.R.V.I.S. was a massive step up from the programming he'd done for the twins. He didn't have a body, so to speak, as his interface was spread across Tony's Malibu mansion. He ran the security for the mansion, as well as the air conditioning, lights, stereo, and basically anything else that could be tied into his system.

With time, that control would grow as he did.

Despite many thinking otherwise, J.A.R.V.I.S. wasn't an attempt at replacing the late butler, but an homage to the man who had cared for Tony when his parents wouldn't. A name passed on like many others who name their children after their parents.