From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (19 January 2023):
linker
linkage editor
link editor
link loader
<programming, tool> (link editor, linkage editor, link loader)
A program that combines one or more files containing object
code from separately compiled program modules into a single
file containing loadable or executable code
This process involves resolving references between the
modules and fixing the relocation information used by the
operating system kernel when loading the file into memory to
run it.
Under Unix, the linker is called "ld" and object files
have filename extension .o (object), .so (shared object), or
.lib (library), and the resulting executable is called
"a.out" by default.
(2001-10-13)