IMHO it's more consistent because the things that react has been modifying have been Elements all along (DOM Elements). React called them components, and it's

IMHO it's more consistent because the things that react has been modifying have been Elements all along (DOM Elements). React called them components, and it's always felt like a kludge to create some thing that WAS a DOM element (boiling down to React.DOM), and then set it's "tagname" as an after-thought. Things like prop are tied directly to the DOM Element, further suggesting that the "thing" the component was, was actually a DOM Element. I guess it's really subjective, but I think it'll be clearer to explain to people now: "React manages creation and rendering of dynamic/intelligent (DOM) Elements" (bonus points for no overlap with the Web Components terminology) But then again a lot of this is just my opinion, consistency