While this behaviour may be a bit confusing for users, it is consistent with what upstream
does.
Check:
https://sqlite.org/quickstart.html
At a shell or DOS prompt, enter: "sqlite3 test.db". This
will create a new database named "test.db".
Or look at one of the downloads offered at the upstream site:
https://sqlite.org/download.html
I checked both the Linux and Windows precompiled binaries ("sqlite-tools"
download) and in both cases the binary is named "sqlite3", not
"sqlite".