All the names for waves come from different hardware and software vendors adopting names for the same or similar concept.
- Wavefront: AMD, comes from their hardware naming
- Warp: Nvidia, comes from their hardware naming for largely the same concept
Both of these were implementation detail until Microsoft and Khronos enshrined them in the shader programming model independent of the hardware implementation so you get
- Subgroup: Khronos' name for the abstract model that maps to the hardware
- Wave: Microsoft's name for the same
They all describe mostly the same thing so they all get used and you get the naming mess. Doesn't help that you'll have the API spec use wave/subgroup, but the vendor profilers will use warp/wavefront in the names of their hardware counters.
You can add to this the Apple terminology, which is simdgroup. This reinforces your point – vendors have a tendency to invent their own terminology rather than use something standard.
Rule #1 in not getting involved in any patent lawsuit: don't use the same terminology as your competitors.
I have to give it to Apple though in this case. Waves or warps are ridiculously uninformative, while simdgroups at least convey some useful information.