This is a bit off-topic, but it has been on my mind for a while.

Has the Rust team considered that choosing cute names like "crate" might turn away some of the target audience?

The same applies to other ecosystems like homebrew, but in the case of Rust some of the target audience certainly includes C/C++ programmers.

C++ is itself a “cute” name. It seems to be doing just fine.

Beyond that, “crate” specifically has utility. The closest existing name is “compilation unit,” but with things like incremental compilation, that’s a bit of a misnomer. We need some kind of name.

C too (from B, which was a stripped down BCPL).