Hmmmmmm ... socket was orignnally a BSD term, if the first person referred it is a man, I reckon he wanted to dedicate it to his first girl-friend :) since without her, nothing in the world could be such beautiful :( But if while he saw her there, she always wear her socket since she regarded as fashion ...
One of the most desgin came true after he got the idea that she was just a general girl, so socket is the general way of manipulating network handle as if you were manupulating a general file handle ... From then on, socket started its role in the Unices world, as well as the lagging Windoze and fashionable Mac OS ...