I was lucky enough to attend the Cross-Government Design meetup yesterday on naming things.
Rebekah Barry summed the day up in the phrase: "call things what they are".
Here are my notes:
The excessive labelling of train toilet doors, in Beth Aitman's excellent illustration (from her UI Writing blog) was an excellent example of how good writing can't fix bad design.
Especially at work, it's amazing how many things aren't called what they are and how people love acronyms. Our "submit your timesheet" tool is called SOP, our "book a meeting room" service is called Condeco and our Health and Safety reporting system is SHERMS. I feel that in public government services at least, things are getting better - although "manage your water abstraction or impoundment licences online" is still admittedly a mouthful. Now if only internal things could have the same standard applied.