The name KImageShop fell foul of trademark law in Germany, and KImageShop was renamed to Krayon, which also appeared to infringe on an existing trademark, so Krayon was finally renamed to Krita in 2002.
Of course, "Krita" can also be read as K-rita, where "rita" means "draw" in Swedish (but not in German) and the K is the usual Qt/KDE prefix.
However, here[0] is a mailing list message from 2002 that answers:
From the About page:
The name KImageShop fell foul of trademark law in Germany, and KImageShop was renamed to Krayon, which also appeared to infringe on an existing trademark, so Krayon was finally renamed to Krita in 2002.
Of course, "Krita" can also be read as K-rita, where "rita" means "draw" in Swedish (but not in German) and the K is the usual Qt/KDE prefix.
However, here[0] is a mailing list message from 2002 that answers:
it is the Swedish work [sic] for crayon.
So it seems you're really spot on.
[0] https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kimageshop/2002-November/0000...