I was being somewhat facetious. I do expect the better students to have learned enough that they know why we use the orbital elements instead of just an XYZ position and a momentum in each of the XYZ directions and that they could recreate the orbital elements by combining other bits of knowledge of geometry and physics, but there’s really very little need for the average person to memorize their customary names.
The actual names are a mixed bag. Inclination and eccentricity are ok because they are both words that people use or hear from time to time, with analogous meanings. “Longitude of the ascending node” is wordy but understandable. But “argument of the periapsis” is downright obscure, and “true anomaly” is completely terrible.
I still think that misusing the word “inclination” merely because it is short is a bad idea. Can we come up with any other word or phrase at all, and use that instead? Maybe just call it the “angle of the long axis” or something. Does anyone else have any suggestions?