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This is more people just casually conflating two separate terms: geothermal and ground-source. Pretty frustrating since it is right there in the name of each, ground-source heat pumps are near-surface and basically leveraging the annual average air temperature while geothermal resources are leveraging higher temperatures much deeper in the earth.

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My dad had a "geothermal" heat pump installed back in the late 90s; that was the term that was commonly used at the time. The US Department of Energy uses that term even today: https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/geothermal-heat-pumps

Not sure where you're hearing the term "ground-source heat pump" in common usage, but it certainly has not filtered out into common parlance.

It's also correct. They exploit heat (thermos) from the Earth (geos). A geothermal power plant and a geothermal heat pump differ in many particulars, but not in the meaning of the adjective they share in common.

Ground source heat pump is often used in UK.

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