Gas doesn't only measure the computation resource but also memory and storage, so "cycles" too is an inaccurate metaphor.
Well "cycles" is good enough as a metaphor to convey the idea we are talking about a resource cost.
At least "cycles" and "ETH per cycles" makes it very obvious that you should multiply them to find the fee. On the other hand it's completely unintuitive you should multiply "price" and "cost" to calculate the fee. If gasCost was called gasQuantity, at least it would have been a little more logical (multiplying price with quantity).
Having non-CPU cycles is extremely common in emulators and VMs, you can just say it's a "virtual cycle of the eth VM", something along those lines.