> If that was true, than naming constructs in programming languages wouldn't matter at all.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/intuitive
I think we're diverging off the track here. Naming is important. Programming has borrowed quite a lot from various places to name the often weird, alien "things" we work with. But a rose by any other name is still a rose.
There is no name for which there exists an analog in nature that we can apply to CAR and CDR. You can't think about them intuitively. As demonstrated elsewhere calling them FIRST and REST is a mistake. FIRST, SECOND, THIRD and so one are just English words for for CAR, CADR, CADAR, and so on.
So it's best not to get stuck in the "intuitive" trap. CAR and CDR have stuck around because people have argued about it endlessly for 40 years and haven't come up with a better name. They took on abstract symbols and the people writing Common Lisp code kept shipping systems.
> Its not, its just one of many small hurdles that keep Lisp as a fairly niche language
I don't think that's the reason for it's lack of market share. That has more to do with corporate politics and business. Read up on the history of Symbolics.
tldr; there were once only commercial implementations of Common Lisp that cost far too much and delivered little. Because money.
So a couple generations of programmers didn't get exposed to it as their first language.
> C-family languages declaration syntax is a major factor in the popularity of dynamically typed languages
Is that so? Why then are their interpreters and virtual machines written in C or some other language? PyPy is making an effort but even then... lots of C. Most implementations I've seen of Common Lisp are written in Common Lisp. Odd.
CAR/CDR isn't a problem. I've explained it five times in various posts on this thread. There's even a link to the HyperSpec (the HTML form of the ANSI specification). It's quite simple.
The real problem is that Common Lisp isn't the first language for most "newcomers." So they come packed with notions and biases that they forget to leave at the door. If C is your first language pointers aren't a big deal and you learn to read the declaration syntax. You know it's not great and that it's difficult to pick up but once you get it you move on. In a similar fashion when you pick up Lisp you figure out CAR and CDR.
Changing the names of CAR and CDR isn't going to make Lisp any more appealing to newcomers. You just have to learn what they are and move on.