It was originally called "OpenClaude" before Anthropic told them to knock that off. Pretty sure "OpenClaw" was eventually picked just to be petty.

No, it was Clawdbot, then Moltbot, then OpenClaw: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenClaw. It had the "claw" related lobster theme from early on.

Maybe coupled with a nod to manus-mania?