I think this is the dilemma of semver versus "market" versioning. If true semver is confusing, perhaps stick with the LTS releases which are named differently (one of the reasons being clear communication)?

The LTS versions are named after the periodic table of elements, starting at a and moving forward. First one was "Argon" (4.x), second "Boron" (6.x).

You can read more on LTS and naming here: https://github.com/nodejs/LTS