Non-descriptive gene nomenclature
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To my knowledge there is no good rule on how to name genes. The first person to name a gene or an allele is free to just pick up a that (s)he finds easy to remember and eventually intuitive. Sometime the author just picks a funny name. Here are a few examples from Drosophila melanogaster data base:


bag of marbles: involved in oogenesis, spermatogenesis.
breathless: involved in development of trachea.
buttonhead: regulates segmentation of the head.
dissatisfaction: involved in many aspects of sexual behavior.
hobo: a mobile genetic element.
Indy: for "I'm not dead yet"; this mutation makes the fly live twice as long.
windbeutel: German for "cream puff".


Did you suggest to name genes based on their sequence? Would be quite painful! One cannot name a gene based on its sequence as the sequence is way too long. The median gene length in humans  is 24,000 base pairs (Fuchs G et al. 2014). You just need to refer to a database to match a sequence to a gene name (see BLAST for example).

How could we improve this system?

Do you have any suggestion on how we should name genes? Should they be named in relation to the phenotype they affect or to the biological pathway that are involved in or maybe something else? The issue is that we often annotate and name a gene before knowing much about its effect.

Note that some genes have several names which is indeed confusing. Would be good to solve this a little bit.