I think the name's just fine. It searches through your code in a way that you can define semantically/with more context. All of the alternatives you mention car

I think the name's just fine. It searches through your code in a way that you can define semantically/with more context. All of the alternatives you mention carry less meaning, and are less memorable. This is like saying that PubNub is a bad name because it does messaging, and has little to do with pub-sub. Or hell, even that Y Combinator should be called something like StartupFactory since it's not really a recursive tool. In short, the metaphor's close enough.