I believe it's used because it keeps track of "children", or child functions spawned by the current function. Without knowing that background however, it's not

I believe it's used because it keeps track of "children", or child functions spawned by the current function. Without knowing that background however, it's not immediately obviously to someone that hasn't heard the term what it means. As others have mentioned, reusing the "await" keyword could cover a lot of these nursery scenarios.