this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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Fediverse

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A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).

If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to !moderators@lemmy.world!

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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

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[–] simple@lemmy.world 239 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

The origin of the name is actually told in Lemmy's GitHub page, it's not just the Motorhead singer and Lemmings:

Why's it called Lemmy?

So basically the name came from an amalgam of things the lead dev liked.

[–] Dnn@lemmy.world 62 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] Patariki@feddit.nl 2 points 1 year ago

Yes i realy miss an option to sort comment by votes as default. I hope that gets implemented at some point.

[–] shnizmuffin@lemmy.inbutts.lol 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Beliriel@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Lemmy was basically God in the metal scene.

[–] _haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 year ago

The koopa is named after the lead singer from Motorhead IIRC

[–] stuffandthings@discuss.online 2 points 1 year ago

Thank you. I saw a comment claiming it was named after the butt gerbil from South Park. I am relieved to know that it is not.

[–] Orionza@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 year ago

I was wondering how from Koopa. I only knew of Bowser. I've never seen Lemmy Koopa. Thanks for that.