However, coming up with simple names is incredibly difficult. It's easy to write a 10,000 word on a complicated topic, but incredibly difficult to squish it into a few letters.
>"Why do mathematicians continue to proffer and accept this courtesy, when it increases their own mental load and makes their own work more opaque?" (the OP) //
I imagine because it doesn't increase their mental load? It might even reduce it; abstraction is a principle component of the field after all.
Using descriptive names sounds like it requires a half-arsed disabstraction, a series of munged verbose partial truths?
Naming for authors is partially self-documenting too, though practically that's probably not often useful.
This is the first time that reading about math has made me hungry.