According to Wikipedia, they are:

small piece(s) of data sent from a website and stored in a user’s web browser while a user is browsing a website. When the user browses the same website in the future, the data stored in the cookie can be retrieved by the website to notify the website of the user’s previous activity.

But why call them cookies?

Well, nobody seems to know – at least there is a lot of debate about it.

So if we were tasked with rebranding cookies, so that they had a little more meaning what would the alternatives be?

How about a reference stub or just stub.

The part of a check, receipt, ticket, or other document torn off and kept as a record.

If you were tasked with renaming cookies, what would you call them? Leave a comment, or tweet with the hastag #newnameforcookies