The thing is, the virus already had a name. He just refused to call it by its official name, because that wasn't offensive enough for him.

I think it's substantially different.

Initial outbreaks of viruses occur geographically at random (with China having a >1/6 chance); the fact that there are significant UK, South African, and Brazilian variants has a much lower random component and a much higher deterministic component. It also illustrates where those variants are still primarily spreading.

If one of those variants become globally dominant, I doubt we will continue to name them after the location.