In the 90s/00s it was often referred to as 'miukumauku' in Finnish, roughly translates as 'meowmeow', as in the sound a cat makes, since it somewhat looks like a sleeping cat.
I forget the exact details, but I've seen it called a snail in some programming language or other - I remember getting an error message along the lines of 'unexpected snail at line x'! I wish I could recall what language it was - perhaps something verilog related?