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Boxed types in Java are basically the same thing: a heap allocated version of an otherwise stack-allocated type.

I thought the name was pretty clear; when I saw it in some list of different kinds of Rust pointers, I knew what it was immediately.

It doesn't matter if some people are confused, because you can just explain what it is in 3 seconds. What's important for such a ubiquitous type is that the name is short.

> instead of the obvious C(++)/Java-like _ptr, ref, * or & notation/convention

That would be very misleading since Box represents a heap-allocated owned value