The problem is that, in any organization past a few people, someone will eventually wonder if they were the inspiration for a particular name, and not in a good way, or someone might introduce politics or something else divisive.
It's better to have arbitrary names that are memorable in some way but not common enough to be associated with someone living within recent memory.
> someone might introduce politics or something else divisive.
Reminds me of a project I was peripherally involved with many moons ago. The codename for the project was "Tardis" from Doctor Who. No problem there. But we ended up having to redo a significant portion of it later, and someone had the bright idea of changing the redo codename to "ReTardis". It was hilariously juvenile at the time, but I could see how, decades later as society gotten less tolerant of that kind of humor, the codename probably has become objectionable.
It's better to have arbitrary names that are memorable in some way but not common enough to be associated with someone living within recent memory.
IMHO, YMMV, yada yada