How often do you, in all seriousness, reference the transitory UI framework that was introduced two decades ago and deprecated over a decade ago?

At some point, it's okay to reuse names.

Sure it's ok to reuse names, but why would you want to opt into such confusion? It's jot so much that someone is seriously going to be confused so much as just bad branding. You could pick any name.

There is no realistic confusion. Heck, I wrote code in that Carbon back in the day and the association never even crossed my mind. Many professional developers weren’t even adults yet when that Carbon was sunset, or weren’t involved in the Apple ecosystem.

The Apple tunnel vision is pernicious here on HN. Ill tidings for American tech if people can't see the forest through the trees...

Also last I heard Carbon was a temporary codename that they were going to replace with something else if/when the language ever became production ready, though I don't know whether that's still the plan.

I haven’t heard this, and with the number of conference talks and media done about it, if that were the plan I’d expect it to be pretty front and center so that those interested would be aware.