There are several reasons; 1.) When they don't use a name for far too long, Hasbro's rights to the name expires. They nameslap to secure the rights. 2.) A nod to the past characters.
Of course, if it bothers you, there's no one to stop you from renaming Armada Jetfire into "Tubby Starlumpkins". They are your toys, after all...
I'm not entirely sure what you're asking, why the name re-use or why there really are a lot of similar adjective names. To the former, as mentioned, it's for copyright and IP purposes to keep the trademarks in effect. Some times to get around issues, names were changed either for a time or lost entirely due to the changing nature of the law; Shockwaves were called Shockblast because they had lost the rights for several years, same with Trailbreaker to Trailcutter. Jazz has been deemed too generic, so you get Autobot Jazz, or Specialist Jazz. To the latter, it's almost inevitable given the Transformers naming convention; outside of certain characters who have Latin names or plays on words (or even outright direct words), practically every other Transformer (and most of the 1986 - Present) uses a virtual portmanteau system of naming by combining two other words; Skytread, Hardhead, etc. There really are only so many cool sounding and descriptive names that kids would understand, just take a look at how many sky(blank) names there are. Then for whatever reason, even among the original first few years of Transformers, there were more S names then any other letter, heck it's the only letter at NTFA's original full length bio site that has to be broken up because there are so many. Even Full Moon Studios pointed out that it went against common convention, with Megatron's three key officers being Starscream, Shockwave, and Soundwave, all three S names that sound familiar, something that wouldn't happen today. Heck, every Dinobot outside of Grimlock had a name that started with an S! Why that is, we don't know. Maybe branding wanted S names, perhaps Budiansky brainstormed better S names at the time.
I enjoy giving every individual transformer a unique name. Oftentimes, the Japanese name is a good stand-in. RID Prowl is MachAlert, stuff like that.
There's at least four Scourges: the Galvatron servant, the Transmetal 2 locust, the black G2 Laser Optimus, the dragon-form ruler of the Jungle Planet.
Yeah, I wanna know if we're talking about: Inferno and Inferno or Swindle and Swindler (Sideswipe and Side Swipe ?) (should've went with Inferno and Twinferno )
What about Prowl? G1 police car BW lion BW TM2 owl The other BW TM2 owl, "Prowl II" RID police car "Prowl 2" spychanger Energon police car Animated motorcycle Prowl-Bot from Go-Bots Minicon pistol/police car TF Prime police car MW Prowl clone and his drones Oy vey...
Well, there are literally thousands of Transformers characters. It's inevitable that it will get confusing.
