Why is a Transistor called a Transistor?
John Pierce named it, according to a PBS documentary in 2000. He worked with Shockley at Bell Labs.  

Before Shockley sandwiched three semiconductor layers together, the only kind of transistor was the point-contact...uh, not "point contact transistor"! That word wasn't invented yet.  "Point contact solid state amplifier"?   But Shockley's invention became "transistor" for "transfer"+"resistor", but what sense, you ask, does that make?   

Current flowing between emitter and collector is a "transfer" of charge.  It is not a good conductor - it is a resistor.  

Also, vacuum tubes were commonly characterized by "trans-conductance" as a measure of gain: output current divided by grid voltage.  Transistors were supposed to be opposite of tubes in many ways - more reliable, use far less power, rugged not delicate, etc.   The opposite of conductance is resistance.  

There's no particular logic in characterizing the gain of a transistor by some output voltage over some input current, but for naming a sexy new gadget who cares.  Today, and for the last few decades, bipolar transistor amplifier capability has been characterized by beta which is a pure number, current over current, and JFETs are characterized by, um... transconductance.  (Also called "transfer admittance")