The Java 2 platform has been an incredible success. Introduced as a major revision of Java technology in 1999, its editions - the Enterprise Edition, Standard Edition, Micro Edition, and Java Card (which never adopted the "2" in its brand name) -- have become standards in their development specialties.
The Java marketing team met with a large sample of the Java partner community, and the majority were in agreement with the idea of simplifying the naming system for the Java 2 platform: Drop the 2. Expand the acronym. Say "Java."
Starting from the 2005 JavaOne Conference, we all will adopt the new naming system. As future releases of the platform ship,
J2SE 6.0 will become Java SE 6 (code name Mustang)
J2SE 7.0 will become Java SE 7 (code name Dolphin)
J2EE 5.0 will become Java EE 5.
J2ME will become Java ME, because it does not have a version number
That's without the "2"
Current versions as well as older versions of the platform will maintain their current naming (for example, J2EE 1.4, J2SE 5.0, J2SE 1.4.x, and so on).