This is a great question. I don't really know.

This is the logo that was used on fedorahosted. (Not used on Pagure yet due to issue 970).

One theory I gathered so far is this: since pungi is the instrument played by snake charmers, it could have some relationship to Anaconda.

Maybe @ausil knows something?

I honestly am not 100% sure, I probably knew it at some point. maybe @jkeating can shed some light. likely @lsedlar is correct and its tied to keeping anaconda inline :)

The name Pungi does indeed come from the instrument used to charm snakes. Anaconda being the software Pungi was manipulating, and anaconda being a snake, presumably because it's written in Python, led to the referential naming.

The first name, which was suggested by Seth Vidal, was FIST, Fedora Installation Tool. That name was quickly discarded and replaced with Pungi.

There was also a bit of an inside joke that when said aloud, it could sound like punji, which is a sharpened stick at the bottom of a trap. Kind of like software... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punji_stick

This issue has been migrated to Fedora Forge:
https://forge.fedoraproject.org/pungi/pungi/issues/600

Please continue any further discussion there.