The name has multiple origins, Graydon notoriously gave a different story each time he was asked. One of the origins mentioned is that Graydon thought that rus

The name has multiple origins, Graydon notoriously gave a different story each time he was asked. One of the origins mentioned is that Graydon thought that rusts (a kind of mushroom) were pretty cool (they are! they have a super complex lifecycle and it's pretty interesting). Another is that Rust is actually not something with new concepts in it, everything in Rust is a very well established concept from earlier PL research, Rust just packages them nicely.