If we didn't have the debased term of REST, we'd still need to create a new name for the thing that is a connectionless language-agnostic schema-free method call with data orientation that encourages statelessness and some default behaviours which reduce the cost of interop without needing IDL, a thing which isn't CORBA or COM or Java's RMI or SOAP.

Because that thing is what REST means now. I use HATEOAS when I mean the other thing.