Apero, although I do thank you for chiming in and demonstrating why using the thing called "indirect object syntax" isn't a good idea, my question wasn't about that. I am (almost) fully aware of the drawbacks of the syntax. My question was more about whether —from a linguistical point of view— the name "indirect object" was the most accurate.

Again, I'd like to use the kick $ball; # i.e. $ball->kick example, where $ball obviously is a direct object and not an indirect object.

But Athanasius nicely quoted the friendly manual and made me realize that, although Perl does resemble English, Perl simply isn't English.