Actually nice topic.
I’ve also wondered where the term came from and what exactly is “Minimal synth/wave/electro or whatever….”
I’m not gonna quote everybody or everything.
As already discussed earlier in this topic, the one word “minimal” has different meanings to different people.
There’s minimal as in the most basic things, there’s minimal as minimal music or minimalistic music as performed by Wim Mertens, Soft Verdict, Reich, Cage, Stockhausen, etc… Actually if you talk to people within music-circles, this is the kind of music they will refere to.
For the younger kids there’s minimal as in minimal techno.
And then there’s minimal as in minimal synth, wave, etc…
All these things actually do not refere to the music, but to the essence of the word: back to basics.
One drone or one note, one tiny beat or sound or in the case of minimal wave back to the naivity of (post)punk.
The same goes for electro actually, there’s hip hop electro, there’s electro as in crude synthpop, there’s techno electro and there’s electro in the gothic scene.
4 different styles, that have the same base and/or are influenced by each other.
And actually the same goes for minimal 
Where does “our” minimal come from then, who used it first? I have no clue whatsoever. But what I know is that is follows the same course from that other so much used term on eBay: KBD or Killed By Dead.
Killed By Dead were a series of bootlegcompilations from the early 90’s with nearly unfindable naive, one-off, non-commercial, crude, punksongs, taken from singles, compilations, demotapes, etc….
In the beginning KBD was used by collectors to separate the unknown gems from the widely known commercial “day by day” punk. Nowadays its used by every seller on eBay when there’s even a hint of “punk"guitar.
Sounds familiar doesn’t it?
