Short answers, pulled from the story.
Presbyterian comes from the Greek word for elder, or presbyter. The name reflects the tradition's form of church government, in which representative assemblies of elected elders rather than bishops or monarchs govern the church at every level from the local session up to the General Assembly.
Presbyterianism took its definitive shape in Scotland through the work of John Knox, a Scottish Catholic priest who studied under John Calvin in Geneva before returning to Scotland. In August 1560, the Parliament of Scotland adopted the Scots Confession as the creed of the Scottish kingdom, and in December 1560 the First Book of Discipline established the framework of Presbyterian church governance.
The Westminster Standards are the Westminster Confession of Faith and the larger and shorter catechisms, formulated by the Westminster Assembly between 1643 and 1649. They replaced the Scots Confession as the primary doctrinal standard and remain, to varying degrees, the confessional foundation of most Presbyterian denominations worldwide.
There are roughly 75 million Presbyterians worldwide. The tradition is particularly strong in South Korea, where 9 million Presbyterians belong to close to 20,000 churches affiliated with the two largest denominations, and in sub-Saharan Africa, where Presbyterian churches are present in at least 23 countries.
John Knox studied under John Calvin in Geneva and brought Reformed teachings back to Scotland, where he worked with civil magistrates to establish the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. He wrote the Book of Common Order and was instrumental in the adoption of the Scots Confession by the Parliament of Scotland in August 1560.
Presbyterianism officially arrived in Colonial America in 1644 with the establishment of Christ's First Presbyterian Church in Hempstead, New York, organized by the Reverend Richard Denton. The first presbytery in Philadelphia followed in 1703, and by 1789 these bodies had grown into the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.