“Kanto” is Finnish for tree stump, the bottom part of the trunk and roots. We’ve cut off the traditional B+tree, but it’s still a database, and there’s new growth. The grooves on the trunk are referencing the classic stacked-cylinders icon used for databases, storage, and hard drives.
We’re using KantoDB to mean the whole project and the network-accessible server software, while the programming library letting you embed a database directly into your application is named just Kanto.