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The use of + as shorthand for sum (Σ would be clearer, but alas, not ASCII) is perhaps not ideal, but that's not an S-expression problem, but a function naming problem.

I'm curious how it is ambiguous. What two meanings do you see?

Perhaps the complaint is that there's a sort of cold-start problem -- it's not obvious that we're starting from zero. With addition, it's hard to imagine what else to start from, but perhaps starting from 1 would make sense in some contexts, where `(+ 1)` could evaluate to `2`.

In addition/summation the base case is zero. And I find it quite apt that the plus operator stand for summation in a language where operator precedence is not a debate.