The problem is not the term "imaginary", the problem is the term "number. Unlike any other numbers imaginary numbers cannot be ordered by size. So in that sense

The problem is not the term "imaginary", the problem is the term "number. Unlike any other numbers imaginary numbers cannot be ordered by size. So in that sense they are not numbers at all. In fact they represent rotations in two dimensions. They should be better called rotation operators instead of imaginary numbers.