Where did the text segment get its name?

Question

Traditional assembler, and higher level compilers work with several memory segments, according to intended use. Hence, there is a data segment, a stack segment, a bss,

Answer 1

Going a little further with nos's comments, I turned up a scanned version of the GE-635 Programming Manual, and found the following in the section on the macro assembler:

The GE-625/635 Macro Assembler is being provided to give the professional programmers some of the conveniences of a compiler and the flexibility of an Assembler. [...] The output options enable him to obtain binary text in relocatable as well as absolute formats.

So, it appears that the use of "binary text" was a GE colloquialism, or perhaps a commonly used term at the time (remember that those were the days when card readers/punches were used for much IO). So, one possible path is GE, to Multics via GE-645, to Unix via Bell Labs' work on Multics, to Linux.