The project was started by Fabrice Bellard (using the pseudonym "Gérard Lantau") in 2000, and was led by Michael Niedermayer from 2004 until 2015. Some FFmpeg developers were also part of the MPlayer project. The name of the project is inspired by the MPEG video standards group, together with "FF" for "fast forward". The logo uses a zigzag pattern that shows how MPEG video codecs handle entropy encoding.[0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FFmpeg#History
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Fourier_transform
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FFmpeg#History
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Fourier_transform