Strike that last comment about tooltips; I see they're already there.

Some context on the specific issue here:

http://www.quora.com/Phabricator/Why-is-the-Browse-feature-called-Diffusion-and-not-just-Browse

Generally, the home page is overwhelming to new users right now, independent of application names. We have some more direct attacks on that in queue:

• T3583: Fix the Swamp of Suck that is the home page content panel
• T4103: Implement "Role Profiles" to provide search, homepage and application defaults

Work in these areas may mitigate application name confusion to some degree: for example, by allowing an administrator to reconfigure the home page so only a small number of applications are "above the fold" when users log in for the first time, rather than exposing them to the full list of available applications immediately, and by allowing them to put relevant/contextual information on the home page to orient new users.

Feedback we get about this is sometimes pretty severe and emotional and seems out of line with the actual amount of confusion I'd expect these names to cause (see http://fab.wmflabs.org/T119 for a handy example of some strong feelings) so I think this may partly be an easy thing for users who have an overwhelming initial experience to latch onto as problematic, because it's more difficult to express that the entire homepage isn't very cohesive or focused and kind of just dumps them into the melee without any guidance.

This line of thinking may or may not be on the right track, but I think what we're likely to do here is try to fix the homepage first and then see how much feedback we're still getting about application names. If it doesn't abate much we can look at that more specifically.