Tl;dr: no one knows how they came up with the name. It used to be called other things before branding became a thing. Board minutes don’t detail where the name Smarties came from, just that it was decided.

The title is a misrepresentation of the article really, it should really be something like “Smarties: How the stocking staple came to be” since it’s more a chronicle of its origins, than an account of how it got its name. Still an interesting read though.