It is called super()
because the parent of a class
is sometimes called its superclass.
super()
A constructor for a child class always starts with an invocation of one of the constuctors in the parent class. If the parent class has several constructors then the one which is invoked is determined by matching argument lists.
For example, we could define a second constructor for Movie
that does not include an argument for length.
It starts out by invoking the parent constructor that does not
have an argument for length:
// alternate constructor public Movie( String ttl, String dir, String rtng ) { super( ttl ); // invoke the matching parent class constructor director = dir; rating = rtng; // initialize members unique to Movie }