Cockroaches may be gross, but they have the property that they can survive almost anything -- which is of course what you want from a distributed, fault-tolerant database.

As far as I know, "jank" only has negative connotations, and a quick glance at the website did not provide an alternate interpretation of the name.

Also, if the author is looking for sponsors, some companies might be reluctant to be a proud sponsor of jank.