The term "Gherkin" is associated with Agile user stories because it is the name of a specific format for writing user stories that was introduced by the Cucumber testing framework. Cucumber is a popular open-source tool for Behavior-Driven Development (BDD), which is a software development methodology that emphasizes collaboration between developers, testers, and business stakeholders. The actual name is credited to Dan North, the creator of BDD, in a May 2006 blog post.

The Gherkin syntax is a way of writing user stories in a structured format that can be easily understood and shared by all team members, including non-technical stakeholders. The Gherkin syntax uses a simple language that is designed to be readable by both technical and non-technical people. It consists of a set of keywords, such as "Given", "When", and "Then", that describe the steps of a user story.

The Gherkin syntax is named after the small pickled cucumber, which is a reference to the idea of "pickling" or preserving the requirements of a user story in a structured, easy-to-understand format. The name was chosen to reflect the simplicity and ease of use of the syntax.

The Gherkin syntax has become popular in the Agile development community because it provides a standardized format for writing user stories that can be easily understood and shared by all team members. It can also be used to automate acceptance testing, as the steps of a user story can be mapped to test cases that verify that the software meets the requirements specified in the user story.