That the term came from Ada (or the research that went into it) is my understanding, too.
It may be associated specifically with Alexander Stepanov [original C++ STL author, but also active in early Ada], or work he did in the early 80s (which contributed to Ada, I believe, and then into C++): http://stepanovpapers.com/
"David R. Musser, and Alexander A. Stepanov: Tecton: A Language for Manipulating Generic Objects. In Program Specification, Proceedings of a Workshop, Aarhus, Denmark, August 1981"
"Generic Programming. The language Tecton, which first used generic programming concepts, is described in “Tecton: A Language for Manipulating Generic Objects” by Kapur, Musser, and Stepanov (1981). The Ada library is described in the paper “Generic Programming” by Musser and Stepanov (1988), and C++ STL in “The Standard Template Library” by Stepanov and Lee (1994). All of these materials are available on www.stepanovpapers.com."
Parametric polymorphism though was present in Standard ML and other functional lanagages from the mid-70s on. But not called generics, and not "generic programming" per se. So, hm.
It may be associated specifically with Alexander Stepanov [original C++ STL author, but also active in early Ada], or work he did in the early 80s (which contributed to Ada, I believe, and then into C++): http://stepanovpapers.com/
"David R. Musser, and Alexander A. Stepanov: Tecton: A Language for Manipulating Generic Objects. In Program Specification, Proceedings of a Workshop, Aarhus, Denmark, August 1981"
and
https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/from-mathematics-to/978...
"Generic Programming. The language Tecton, which first used generic programming concepts, is described in “Tecton: A Language for Manipulating Generic Objects” by Kapur, Musser, and Stepanov (1981). The Ada library is described in the paper “Generic Programming” by Musser and Stepanov (1988), and C++ STL in “The Standard Template Library” by Stepanov and Lee (1994). All of these materials are available on www.stepanovpapers.com."
Parametric polymorphism though was present in Standard ML and other functional lanagages from the mid-70s on. But not called generics, and not "generic programming" per se. So, hm.