I strongly argue against those types of abbreviations in naming, for exactly the points you make.

Here's how I view it:

The distinction between prod and dev is pretty clear cut. The words "dev" and "prod" have significantly different shapes and are immediately unambiguous. There's no need to remember a superhero vs astronomical object distinction.

As the number of database server instances grows, you've got another level of naming issues that arises when needing to distinguish between hosts and db server instances—and perhaps even database/schema independence if necessary. Staying consistent and easy-to-use with an arbitrary naming scheme becomes increasingly unwieldy, in my opinion.