Historically, hedging was the reason when the first such funds launched that allowed them to use a specific regulatory loophole. The name has stuck around much more so than the strategy, though, nowadays there are entire classes of hedge funds that don't necessarily work like that anymore (eg long-only, special situations arbitrage, global macro,...). Nowadays it pretty much just means a specific legal structure, if it means anything at all, since it's become such a widely used term.