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It's not because of their temperature. One version of the SH3 (single issue, at 80 MHz) is speced at 260 mW. The SH4 used in the Dreamcast (dual issue at 200 MHz), seems to be 4W.

Hitachi apparently had a trademark on "Cool Engine" for the SuperH (https://www.cpushack.com/CIC/embed/announce/HitachiSH7709.ht...).

As in the "hot chips" conference -- supposed to mean "amazing and a big hit". I mean, would the marketing department promote something negative?

They definitely don't run hot. In addition to Dreamcasts, they were used in many appliance type devices like NAS, and I've never seen or heard of any that require cooling.

Undoubtedly retronymized from Super Hitachi as in the successor to Hitachi H8... So if it weren't supposed to stand for hot, it'll still have had to be something with H.

Super Hot like they were named in Japan in the early 90s