> If you are writing a book about something that has an official animal or something, I am sure you can have some sway, but for the long tail of titles, you get one assigned randomly at some point.

Wouldn't that potentially be a copyright violation? E.g. using elephant for PHP could be seen as trying to copy PHP's logo? [1] (Not a lawyer, this is just a question)

[1] This is likely a terrible example, as I don't think elephant is PHP's official logo, just an associated mascot like Java's Duke? Still... I don't know if this can be copyrighted.