I don't mind that much unix commands, in general (with their names, not with their usage, I hate using grep and find.)
I hate chmod, too, because I can't remember exactly what permissions are what (number-wise.) My fault, not his. But I'd love it to be named "grant" and have a neater language. Like grant user/group/whatever read,write,execute (rwx are actually okayish...) filename. I know chmod is more or less like this. But I don't stand it. It's like combinatoric problems, something deep inside of me refuses to accept doing it :)
I guess you know what grep stands for, don't you? It's a "legacy" command from an early version of ed, g/re/p as in "global search" a "re"gex "p"rinting results. It could be named re (for regex, search implicit) or res (I like this.) Anyway, I use ag (the silver searcher) for text/code search, though. Less letters, easier to use (I keep forgetting if I need -r, -e and all that, ag makes it somewhat easier.)
As for mv, cp, rm, if all 2-letter acronyms were that easy to remember! Did you use extensively DOS? Most commands where far too verbose, I cringe if thinking about having to write copy to copy. Cp is just a smash with the left hand and another with the right hand and off you go. Minimise errors, 2 strokes. Actually now I wonder why in nix we have clear and not cls (or just cl)
As a matter of names... Plan9 uses nix names, and since Plan9 tried to do things "differently" almost just for the sake of it, either they didn't think about it or thought it was a bad idea.