It is "cryptic" and "ugly" to you just because you're not familiar with it. You'd pick the macro-based implementation because you are familiar with it.
Seeing this argumentation is so tiresome, because it feels like there is a lack of self-awareness regarding what is "familiar" and what isn't, which is subconsciously translated to "ugly" and "bad".
Have you ever used other (modern) programming languages ?
In a lot of languages, you achieve the same with 1 line of code. It's not about familiarity, it's about the fact that it's a long and convoluted incantation to get the name of an enum.
Why do I have to be familiar with all those weird symbols just to do a trivial thing ?
Update:
Zig:
const Color = enum { red, green, blue };
const name = @tagName(Color.red); // "red"
Rust:
#[derive(Display)]
enum Color { Red, Green, Blue }
let name = Color::Red.to_string(); // "Red"
Clojure:
(name :red) => "red"