The project name "ashkelon" is definitely influenced by names of other open source projects, especially jakarta projects. There are two main reasons for selecting "ashkelon" as the name for this project. One is selfish, the other is subtle.

I became aware of a Jakarta project called "Alexandria" (now defunct). As I read about Alexandria, I realized that my project had many goals similar to Alexandria's: making many api docs available in a single place. One cannot find a more aptly named project, as the city of Alexandria was the host of the largest known library in antiquity.

It turns out that Ashkelon is also a city, an ancient city, not 250 miles from Alexandria on the mediterranean coast of Israel. The thought that two projects so close to each other conceptually were also named after two cities close to each other geographically amused me. Furthermore, the Alexandria project was hosted on what I considered to be a high profile and high visibilitly open source site: The Apache Jakarta project. My project came from relative obscurity (ashkelon likewise is not known for being the source of great libraries or documentation projects). I thought to myself.. "maybe a great project can emerge from relative obscurity.."

What tipped the scales in favor of naming the project 'ashkelon' is the additional fact that the city of Ashkelon was my home for a number of years in my youth.