I totally agree with you that this naming is unfortunate.

To the point that I can't read my own modules w/o comments.

Now I'm pondering about aliasing them in my own modules, to help me understand my code

expanding the text from SO with potential aliases.

There are 2 sets of yes/no options. The function can be fatal (like die) or nonfatal (like warn). It can report just the line where the function was called, or it can report a full backtrace.

         Fatal  Backtrace      Alias
carp       N        N          warn_user °
cluck      N        Y          warn_full
croak      Y        N          die_user
confess    Y        Y          die_full
[download]

FWIW: Renaming subs is easy in Perl.

*warn_user = \&Carp::carp

°) it's not warning the caller