Release Names Confuse And Do Not Help

When the heck did people start to name release versions with a name as well?

I can’t believe it. Did Debian start all this?

With version numbers, which they have anyway, you can always tell how new the version is, if it’s newer than another one, or if it’s more recent than the last one you tried or used.

With names, unless you do know them all, you can not.

Nobody is familiar with names of versions of all software he uses. Do you know your current and unstable Debian names? Previous and current eclipse release-version name?

Just go back to plain version numbers. They may not be as nice to spell, but ppl. will use the actual software name (as I can imagine ppl. will not say Debian lenny and eclipse Helios, but only the version names when referring to a specific release) and I won’t have to translate a fucking name to a number which I can then check how recent, or not, it is.

So, what’s the pro of it? Why do people use them?