Earlier quoted context omitted.
does the R language have an executable also called R? I think the reason is that this is close to home to Ramda users - the typical name for the Ramda object in Javascript is R. (for the unaware, Ramda is basically Underscore but more powerful and with a saner, more consistent API)
Yes, it does. Even if it didn't, it's still confusing I'd say. Why not just call it ramda? Still quite short. Actually, R is the only single letter executable that I can think of. Chances of clashes are ~1/26 :)
From the js perspective you use it all over the place so it's nice to have a one letter name:
var my_sort = R.compose(R.first, R.sort, R.prop('id'))