Hello!
I’m a Reddit transplant. I get the name Reddit (I read it) or at least that’s how I figured it got its name.
Lemmy though? At first it reminded me of lemon 🍋 I looked up “lemmy” and found an origin of the name, which means “Devoted to God” and is a diminutive of Lemuel.
But where the service’s name originates is partially from the name of Ian Frasier Kilmister, aka Lemmy, from the band Motorhead.
The origin of his name: “The name originated from his often said sentence “can you lem’me five?” oder “lemme a fiver?”.” (Source)
Then finally the Wikipedia reveals full information that the creator partially took the name from Lemmy the Motorhead band member, and a game called Lemmings, which he had been playing at the time.
This is in case anyone has wondered why this interesting service has such an odd name!
#lemmy #lemmyorigins
The origin of the name is actually told in Lemmy’s GitHub page, it’s not just the Motorhead singer and Lemmings:
So basically the name came from an amalgam of things the lead dev liked.
The koopa is named after the lead singer from Motorhead IIRC
Why are speculations voted higher than this accurate answer? Link to the Github page for everyone to check: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy#whys-it-called-lemmy
My favorite part is that Lemmy Koopa was also named after mister Kilmister.