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The weird thing is, why not just call it something new? I've always wondered if they called Perl 6 "Smeebly" or something would it get a better reception? C+++ ? My personal taste is that if you break backwards compatibility that is when you have a 'new' language and you just just name it as such.

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People would, on the surface, see a different beast, even though it remains 99% the same language. Not worth it.

With this argument, every release that adds a new keyword (for example) would have to be given a new name, since it will very likely break some code. Question that remains is how much must the changes be before the thing deserves a new name.

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