The creation of the GBAtemp name is surrounded in folklore or maybe just one hell of a grog induced memory gap.
Some say GBAtemp was forged in the depths of the Earth, others say it was a meteorite that fell from the sky, some even believe it was a gift from the frog king but they have since been eliminated by those who follow the newt king.
Either way it is said that Kivan founded GBATemp as a site to grab the latest GBA roms and to dodge the ills that would plague anyone trying to find the latest roms with the distribution methods de jour of the time (IRC was overrun by idiots, Usenet is apparently too hard, FTP was dead and HTTP sites lasted all of 20 minutes).
As they would likely only last for a few days/weeks they were "temporary" thus it was a GBA temp site.
Somewhere along the line a hotel was built and a duck was murdered as well.