It might've been named in the same vein as Lisp-Flavoured Erlang, which is indeed (last I checked) a Lisp and very much not Erlang (at least language-wise; it still uses the Erlang VM and OTP).
On another note, the lack of garbage collection at the very least would make Dale very abnormal in terms of being a Lisp v. some other language that happens to embrace s-expressions for its syntax.
I mean, it's not C. And it is a lisp.
So doesn't it make sense to call it "lisp with a flavor of C" rather than the other way around?
Cool project!