The story is quickly told. The Atlassian team used Bugzilla and they started calling it Godzilla internally. In Japan, the character is called Gojira or Kujira. And that's why it's called Jira. By the way, that also explains why it's pronounced "JEEra".
Here's a very old Atlassian documentation article about it: What does JIRA mean?
You must be a registered user to add a comment. If you've already registered, sign in. Otherwise, register and sign in.