And somehow magically all corporate product names land the one you want

No, it’s not magic, it’s called marketing, market research, and psychology. There are literally billions of dollars that go into advertising, do you think they just magically come up with names?

all fediverse or FOSS inventions land the one you don’t

Literally never once claimed that. Mastodon is a little long but at least it’s satisfying and conjures up images of a big fuzzy creature instead of a rodent.

I agree, Reddit’s name isn’t why people use it, but critically it doesn’t hold people back from using it.

Reddit is a satisfying enough word, doesn’t disparage it’s users or sound like a childish joke, and doesn’t conjure images of rats or rodents.

I don’t love it but it is a much better name than Lemmy.

No, you’re confusing partially subjective with completely subjective and the two are vastly different.

Just gonna throw this out there: Lemmy is a bad and dumb name.

1. It’s a joke about users being lemmings
   • this subtly denegrates the user on every usage
   • this implies the app/product itself isn’t that serious and sounds kinda childish
2. It’s not a satisfying word from a pronunciation standpoint. How many other company or product names can you think of that end with that ee sound? Reddit, Twitter, Threads, they all end with these conclusive consonant sounds. Lemmy sounds like it’s trailing off while whining.
3. At best it conjures up images of rat like rodents.