[bperson]

Imagine another possibility. The person that named their project Elf looked at the other projects named Elf and thought, "my project is more deserving of the name". Don't attribute to incompetence that which can be explained with vanity

[nerdponx]

Or they just thought the existing uses of the name were for sufficiently different things.

[bperson]

OP was trying to be unkind so I wanted to keep the theme going. But, yes, your explanation is more likely