alt Hacker NewsSource here for anyone interested[0]. From memory, Ruff was its own thing, (I think named after the bird?) since then they've tried to give projects short letter combinations for consistency and ease of typing (uv, ty, pyx)
[0] https://talkpython.fm/episodes/download/520/pyx-the-other-si...
Ruff wasn't named after the bird, we just think it's funny that Charlie didn't know it was a bird. He made up the word :)