Supposedly Church’s son-in-law once asked him about it, and the response was essentially “it was an arbitrary choice”. So, I’m not totally convinced about that story. Also, what do they mean by “his printer”?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_calculus#Origin_of_the_lambda_symbol

Does “eeny, meeny, miny, moe” imply anything?

Oh, I guess it means it’s picked at random.

@jcoo092 It must be the guy typesetting the book [with good old lead types].

I presume so, but I wouldn’t have thought that a mathematical printer would have been unable to print such things, and unwilling to acquire the relevant types for it either.

I wonder whether we can find a scan from the original somewhere.