This gets asked a lot, but we need a definitive answer from the guy who started the project, damn it. He just won’t tell us other than some vague references to “Lemmy” things. I guess there’s this;
It was nameless for a long time, but I wanted to keep with the fediverse tradition of naming projects after animals. I was playing that old-school game Lemmings, and Lemmy (from motorhead) had passed away that week, and we held a few polls for names, and I went with that.