I won't comment on your general remark but I don't think it is relevant to this specific case. "noatime" has a simple meaning and a clear name that represents i

I won't comment on your general remark but I don't think it is relevant to this specific case. "noatime" has a simple meaning and a clear name that represents its function: it stops updating inode access times. If you don't want your filesystem updating access times you use this mount option and it's done. Functionality of "nodiratime" is the one that's more specific & esoteric and subset of "noatime", thus it has a more specific name. It's not that "noatime" implies "nodiratime" , but more like "nodiratime" implements a subset of functionality of "noatime". Nothing to hate really.