There seem to be two completely distinct issues here:
1) Writing a compatibility package for Mathematica list-processing functions
and naming the functions in it.
2) Changing some of Maxima's function names to those used by other systems
(e.g. Mathematica).
I'll address the first one in this email, and the second one in a different
email.
It would certainly be a handy thing to have a library of Mathematica
compatibility functions with a clear, explicit, general, and consistent
naming convention. Though of course this is not at all the same thing as
having all of Mathematica (notably its pattern-matching).
Using uppercase names would be unclear, not explicit, and certainly doesn't
generalize to compatibility packages for Maple, Octave, R, Matlab, etc. etc.
Using a concatenated prefix 'm' can easily lead to name collisions, and
doesn't generalize well.
I would propose using a longer, explicit prefix, e.g. mma_XXX. This is
clear and explicit. It generalizes well (maple_XXX, matlab_XXX, etc.). It
is consistent.
Of course, the biggest challenge in all this is not naming the functions,
but having them be functionally equivalent in all cases, including messy or
undocumented edge cases. Also, the user needs to be aware that Mathematica
and Maxima performance may be vastly different in some cases where different
representations or algorithms are used.
-s