Oh look that's what it is:

"The name Kawa comes from the Polish word for coffee; a play on words, since Java is another familiar name for coffee."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kawa_(Scheme_implementation)

Interesting, I had always assumed the name was just "Java plus plus" -- ('J'+1) 'a' ('v'+1) 'a'.

Lol, kinda like WNT is VMS with each character incremented by 1.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT

The original Kawa was an interpreter written by Alex Milowski, who is (I assume based on the last name) of Polish backgound. I essentially took over Kawa (with his permission), changed to be compiler-based, and over time re-wrote most or all of it.