Finally, a project should have a good name. One example for a project with an awful name is CVSNT. There are two problems with the name:
It is based on CVS, which most people have ran into its limitations, is considered passé and unloved, and people would rather avoid.
The “NT” part implies it only runs on Windows-NT, which is both misleading and undesirable.
On the other hand, the competing project “Subversion” has a much better name, since it has nothing to do with CVS, or Windows NT, and since it is an English word and sounds cool.
Some projects are successful despite being badly named, while some have a very cool name, but languish. Still, a good name helps a lot.
Also consider what Linus Torvalds said about Linux and 386BSD (half jokingly):
No. That’s it. The cool name, that is. We worked very hard on creating a name that would appeal to the majority of people, and it certainly paid off: thousands of people are using linux just to be able to say “OS/2? Hah. I’ve got Linux. What a cool name”. 386BSD made the mistake of putting a lot of numbers and weird abbreviations into the name, and is scaring away a lot of people just because it sounds too technical.