Ari Lemmke (born December 12, 1963) is the person who gave Linux its name. Linus Torvalds had planned to have it named "Freax" (a combination of 'free', 'freak', and the letter X to indicate a Unix-like system). Ari encouraged him to upload it to a network so it could be easily downloaded. Ari, however, not happy with the Freax name, gave Linus a directory called "linux" on his FTP server (ftp://ftp.funet.fi/) in September 1991. Wikipedia
The definitive Wikipedia entry for Ari Lemmke. Wikipedia is the biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ari_Lemmke