Why is a tank called a tank??
Well that's what they're called, right!?!?
The need for tanks
With the advent of the machine gun we saw the death, quite literally, of cavalry. This first became clear in World War I, where armies were stopped death by well positioned machine gun nests. So began trench warfare, a bloody stalemate that would last years.
Nearly as important as the machine gun in causing this stalemate to continue was plain and simple barbed wire.
As it was easily made and deployed it could be placed everywhere. And it was surprisingly hard to get rid of. The armies tried to blow it up and shoot it up, they tried to go over it and under it. In the end the best way to deal with it was to have men go out and cut it. The problem being that they were out in the open and often under fire when trying to do this, with expected results.
Something was clearly needed to break this stalemate.
Land Ship
Armoured cars had been around since 1902 but as they were mainly existing cars modified, meaning they still rode on wheels they were useless on most terrains but particularly useless on the muddy fields of France and Belgium.
The need for an improved armoured car was realised by most of the countries fighting but it was the British that got theres to the battlefield first and gave it it's name.
At first it was envisioned that these improved armoured tanks would be huge and able to carry many men across the seas of mud, hence the name Land Ship that these future weapons were given. But as development went on the larger planned land ships were scrapped in favour for a smaller one that is more familiar to us today.
Secrecy
As the engineers got more confident that they had a weapon that could make a large impact on the war the need for more security arose. It was decided to use a code word to refer to land ships by.
Due to how they looked when their outer shells were removed from the rest of the machine they were renamed 'water carriers', and the story was that they were to be used to carry water on the Mesopotamian front against the Ottoman empire.
Supposedly this name was scraped due to concerns that, as the army likes to use acronyms, they would be referred to as WC's. WC(water closet) is what a lot of people call bathrooms/restrooms.
So instead it was decided to use the name 'water tank' which as you can guess was shortened to 'tank'.
References
http://www.history.co.uk/topics/history-of-tanks/tank-origins
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_tank
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armored_car_(military)
https://pixabay.com/
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