I've always thought that it's defined the wrong way, and that's also the tip to remember it. As a non-native English speaker, I see "end" as the opposite of "start" (although obviously "end" can mean either end - the start end, or the end end). Anyway, I just remember that "it's defined the wrong way" :)
- In big endian, the most significant (biggest) byte is in the start.
- In little endian, the least significant (littlest) byte is in the start.
Or, referring to bit endianness:
- 128 64 32 16 8 4 2 1 is big endian, because it ends to the little.
- 1 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 is little endian, because it ends to the big.
Even though the usual use of the word endianness refers to how bytes are ordered within a word, its generic meaning refers to the ordering of individually addressable sub-components within the representation of a larger data item (as explained in Wikipedia).