Yeah, but you could also argue that it doesn't make as much sense in git to call cloning a repository "checkout". Because you are cloning the repository to your very own local repository, then you make your changes from that repository and then you push back to the original repository, which is a remote repository.
Essentially, a checkout in git is to checkout files from a particular branch into the current working directory. And that branch is actually in the index, which I would really call the repository - so actually you are indeed "checking out" files from the repository. Once you make your changes, you commit them right back into the index.
11. Completely different concepts for the same commands as other SCM systems.
Case in point: Checkout. In every other system prior to git, going as far back as CVS in 1986, checkout meant grab a remote repo and copy it locally.
In git, it suddenly means to switch branches in a repo you already have. The real "checkout" was renamed to "clone".
Why not use something like "switch" instead?
That's nearly 20 years of muscle memory everyone needed to relearn because.. why?
Git add and SVN add do completely different things as well.
Was it simply not thought of that people who use git would be switching from another system at the time, very likely to be either svn or hg?