> […] it shouldn't take long at all for people to learn the highly consistent naming conventions that tip you off to what type of data is being handled.

I’ve used languages with an approach like this. The difference in what I’ve used is that you separate the conventional part from the rest of the name with a space (or maybe a colon), then only refer to the value by the non-conventional part for the rest of the scope. Then the language enforces this convention for all of my co-workers! It’s pretty neat.