They dropped the ball pretty quickly

It's not, Gemini 4 Carbon is better than Gemini 4 Argon.

Argon internally was called Barium (Argon was a different model) so the models were originally named in alphabetical order. Then they change their mind and decided to call the lightweight model following the atomic weight so Hydrogen after they have released (A)rgon and (C)arbon. I imagine that this lightweight model is the original Argon.

I like the theory, curious how this will evolve though

It's 3 items, it's not difficult. But there's no way to infer that from the names alone and that's Bad Product Naming.

Reasoning-wise Carbon > Argon (so actually is Carbon, Argon = "Fable", "Opus").

I thought they were going by alphabetical order like intel does for GPUs

A = argon for initial release B was skipped because you can't name a product boron C = carbon D = ??????

They might be going for atomic weight, but the average person couldn't say whether argon or carbon was heavier.

For me is because I prefer having a mental model so that I can immediately understand what to expect from a model instead of having to remember every model as a single separate instance.

E.g. I know what to expect from the sonnet vs opus families, so if I read sonnet 4.6 and opus 5.5 I know to which generation they belong and what kind of general capabilities they could offer. if I read opus 9.2 I know something is off. I guess, it helps me organize my thoughts.

With names from Google, if I were to read Gemini Helios, or Gemini Iron I would have no idea how they fit the bigger picture.

I think we're all a little neurodivergent round here. For me- it really bothers me, like... you have a bilion dollar product you've spent countless resources on and you botched the naming... you might as well made a typo in it and call it "Cabron"