This is an attempt to stop a war. I hope it is not too late and that somehow, magically perhaps, peace will prevail again. The latecomers into the arena believe that the issue is: "What is the proper byte order in messages?". The root of the conflict lies much deeper than that. It is the question of which bit should travel first, the bit from the little end of the word, or the bit from the big end of the word? The followers of the former approach are called the Little-Endians, and the followers of the latter are called the Big-Endians.
-- Danny Cohen, ON HOLY WARS AND A PLEA FOR PEACE (http://www.op.net/docs/RFCs/ien-137)

Origin of Little-Endian and Big-Endian terminology