>Why does it have something called 'say' instead of something more intuitive like 'println'. Then there are worse examples: carp, cluck, croak. These are commonly used. They are from the same module of course. There is also Moo, Moose. I'm not sure but was there something called 'Mo' too? Commonly used of course but as you can see from the names - you can't tell what they are for.

I'm not a Perl expert, but have read books on it and done a bit with it. I think Perl tends to attract the kind of people who find these kinds of names (and many other things) fun, and are not put off by it - which is fine.

>worse examples

According to who(m)? Opinions differ.