Speaking of said corruption, I’m guessing the name of the project comes from 3PO being said out loud, as well?
If you check the English credits for Star Wars, R2-D2 is actually spelled out as “Artoo-Detoo (R2-D2)”, and C-3PO is “See Threepio (C3PO)”. At least to me, Artoo and Threepio still work fine as nicknames, but spelling out their full two-word names like that is pretty awkward.
But yes, the project is named after C-3PO, because he was also known to be fluent in a few languages.