This is something that bothered me a lot at school.

5 years ago, when I learned SQL, I always wondered why we specify first the fields we want and then where we want them from.

According to my idea, we should write:

From Employee e
Select e.Name

So why the norm says:

Select e.Name -- Eeeeek, what e means ?
From Employee e -- Ok, now I know what e is

It took me weeks to understand SQL, and I know that a lot of that time was consumed by the wrong order of elements.

It is like writing in C#:

string name = employee.Name;
var employee = this.GetEmployee();

So, I assume that it has a historical reason, anyone knows why?