I.e.,

    NAME
       biff -- be notified if mail arrives and who it is from
    
    […]
    
    HISTORY
       The biff command appeared in 4.0BSD.  It was named  after  the  dog  of
       Heidi Stettner. He died in August 1993, at 15.

    Eric Cooper, a student contemporary to Foderero and 
    Stettner, reports that the dog would bark at the mail 
    carrier,[4][5] making it a natural choice for the name 
    of a mail notification system. Stettner herself 
    contradicts this.[3][6]

Yeah the name collision is unfortunate, but probably fine. The name Biff was just too good to pass up.

The name comes from the fact that Biff is a character in Back to the Future, and it rhymes with Jiff[1]. Jiff is the datetime library that Biff uses.

"Make like a tree and get out of here!" https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9Jabplo2pZU

[1]: https://github.com/BurntSushi/jiff

All short names, that is, pronounceable strings of 4 or maybe even 5 letters are already taken. Some of them taken many times over.

I think fewer people now care about mail notifications in a terminal session than about wrangling datetimes on the command line.

exactly. and chromium is a good looking space shooter with too few levels!

Yes I'm sure root is anxious to read all the mail in their local mailbox