They renamed it to Raku, the renamed have two benefits in minds
1. Reintroduce Perl 6 (Raku) as a completely new language, since some thought that being linked to Perl prevented adoption
2. Open the road for Perl 5 to evolve and add features, many people in the Perl 5 community thought that Perl 6 prevented Perl 5 from growing
In Summary, the sentiment was, Perl 5 and Perl 6 are two different languages each with its own roadmap, but that the name gave the impression they are one, and prevented both from evolving
Perl6 became Raku, a whole different language, something that should have happened since the very beginning instead of putting on a totally different project the label "Perl" and thus funneling in a truckload of FUD that only harmed the language.
