Refers to the order in which bytes are stored in memory.
It does not affect the order in which bits or array elements are stored.
Lore
The adjective endian has its origin in the writings of 18th century Anglo-Irish writer Jonathan Swift. In the 1726 novel Gulliver’s Travels, he portrays the conflict between sects of Lilliputians divided into those breaking the shell of a boiled egg from the big end or from the little end. By analogy, a CPU may read a digital word’s big or little end first.
Little Endian
Address starts with least significant byte of the word (the normal one 🙂) “Normal” because it is dominant today. You really only get Big Endian for super old Instruction Set Architectures… and the Internet 😳
Big Endian
Address starts most significant byte of the word