The official story is that Julia isn’t named after anything, see at its Wikipedia page about it, and also there this recent (joke) quote from the co-creator Jeff: CAS benchmarks (Symbolics.jl and Maxima) - #17 by jeff.bezanson
Maybe julia stands for “Jeff’s uncommon lisp is automated”?
Note, Julia is not really a traditional Lisp language (though has Lisp-like macros), he may be referring to his other language FemtoLisp, that is embedded into Julia; Julia is likely the best Lisp (if considered as such, like e.g. some consider Ruby a Lisp) though without the Lisp non-syntax, the best more traditional Lisp would be Clojure.
I tried with ChatGPT:
:Hvað stendur Júlíá fyrir? [What does Julia stand for, I accidentally ended the Icelandic spelling with “á”, it didn’t matter. Note, the Icelandic pronunciation would be more like Yooleea.]
Ég er afskaplega hrifinn af fyrirspurn þinni um hvað nafnið “Júlía” stendur fyrir. [I’m very fond of your query on what “Júlía” stands for.] […] “Julius” eða “Julia” […]
Auk þess hefur nafnið “Júlía” verið túlkað sem “ung, ung stelpa” eða “mikið af jólagjöfum” í nokkrum tungumálum. [… or “lots of Christmas presents” in several languages, I was very surprised, possibly that’s a hallucination, maybe it can mean that, certainly Julia could have been a present to some people!]
Julia Uses LLVM Infrastructure for Acceleration
Jolted Up Language for Innovation and Agility.
JIT (Just-In-Time) Universal Language Implementation Architecture
Just-in-Time Updatable Language Implementation Architecture
Just Usable Language for Industrial Applications
ChatGPT could make for me lots of valid (Icelandic) acronyms, but they’re mostly bad (seem better for at least some non-Icelandic), and that one isn’t really directly translated to English):
Jafnvel Úthaldandi Listræn Iðnaðarforritun Ákvörðunartöku (meaning “Evenly-Enduring Numerical Industrial Programming for Decision Making”)
Jederzeit Umsetzbare Leistungsoptimierte Interpreter Architektur (German, meaning “Just-In-Time Implementable Performance-Optimized Interpreter Architecture”)
JULIA: Jüngste Und Leistungsstarke Integrierte Anwendungen (German for “Latest and Powerful Integrated Applications”)
Júlia: Journée Utile pour les Logiciels d’Intelligence Artificielle (French for “Useful Day for Artificial Intelligence Software”)
Juste Une Langue Idéale pour l’Analyse (French, meaning “Just an Ideal Language for Analysis”)
Juntando Usos de Librerías para Inteligencia Artificial (Spanish, meaning “Joining Uses of Libraries for Artificial Intelligence”)
Justo Uso di Library per Intelligenza Artificiale (Italian, meaning “Just Use of Libraries for Artificial Intelligence”)
Język Uniwersalny do Analizy Algorytmicznej (Polish, meaning “Universal Language for Algorithmic Analysis”)
JULIA: Jovial User-friendly Language with Impressive Applications (English)