+1 to this the naming is totally opaque and ridiculous.

There is no hint of what each one does. I get that these were internal code names, fine, but to everyone outside Google it's not helpful to have these meaningless names.

ChatGPT and Claude aren't much better - there is still quite a lot of assumed knowledge there assuming you know what e.g. a sonnet is and what an opus is - but at least if you squint there is something there.

Google's names just seem to be randomly generated.

Maybe they were worried that the 3.1 Pro model being around for so lunch ruined the brand? But 3.8 Flash was pretty decent I thought so it's not like "flash" was burnt. I dunno.