The Changelog - Podcasts | Heroku
the intent / meaning was that it is there to make app developers "heroic"
The name "Heroku" is a portmanteau of "heroic" and "haiku".[15]The Japanese theme is a nod to Matz for creating Ruby.
The name itself is pronounced similarly to the Japanese word meaning “widely” (hiroku),
though the creators of Heroku did not want the name of their project to have a particular meaning,
in Japanese or any other language, and so chose to invent a name.