There where a number of competing names at the time- unfortunately none i remember at the moment. I am a member of an email list of old radio collectors. I'll go there and ask if anyone remembers any alternative transistor names.
If you excuse the lecture, the amplification factor of a vacuum tube is measured in terms of transconductance. Conductance is defied as the inverse of resistance and has units current in Amperes ( in practice often milliamps) divided by voltage in volts. In general the grid electrode is the input in vacuum tube amplifier and the plate electrode is the output. Transconductance is the ratio of output ( plate electrode current in milliamps) divided by the input voltage applied to the grid electrode.
So trans conductance is the amplification of a vacuum tube expressed as a conductance ratio. The Trans part come because unlike ordinary conductance measurements the voltage and the current are measured across two terminal sets, not one. Think transfer conductance with the input voltage parameters "transferred" across the vacuum tube electrodes.
I transistor has the input and output parameters reversed with respect to a vacuum tube. The input is a current and the output parameter is a voltage. The amplification ratio is then Voltage/current and voltage divided by current is a resistance. Because the voltage is measured at the input and the current is measured at the output, this is not an ordinary resistance but instead is a Trans-resistance.
It is not much of a leap to refer to a trans-resistance device as a transistor.
I agree that this means a vacuum tube should be a transconductor but transconductor is no improvement over tube ( or valve for our English members) so it is not a surprise that usage never caught on.
If you are an engineer accustomed to thinking of amplification in terms of transconductance or transresistance the name transistor is very adapt and hard to improve upon.