El siguiente es un extracto de http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racks_and_quandles. Remitimos a las referencias allí citadas como sustento bibliográfico [*].

The earliest known work on racks is contained within (unpublished) 1959 correspondence between John Conway and Gavin Wraith, who at the time were undergraduate students at the University of Cambridge. Wraith had become interested in these structures (which he initially dubbed sequentials) while at school. Conway renamed them wracks, partly as a pun on his colleague's name, and partly because they arise as the remnants (or 'wrack and ruin') of a group when one discards the multiplicative structure and considers only the conjugation structure. The spelling 'rack' has now become prevalent.

"En inglés los remnants a los que se alude se llaman wreckage, en francés épave.
De acuerdo a http://rae.es/pecio la palabra pecio significa «Pedazo o fragmento de la nave que ha naufragado», por lo que se sugiere su uso en lugar del anglicismo rack." N. A.

[*] Ver también en la página web de Gavin Wraith: http://www.wra1th.plus.com/gcw/rants/math/Rack.html