An interesting epistemological question is that of meaning. Your colleague seems to assume that just because something means something to him, then there is meaning and otherwise it isn't.

The truth is, of course, that all those symbols we are using everyday, not just in programming, have meaning only because we attribute it to them. Or, to put it differently, the meaning is in your brain, not in the symbol. (To make this clear to oneselve, think of a cuneiform tablet - surely it did have meaning to the writers once upon a time, yet to most of the billions of people today it has not.)

In the light of this, the assumption that long names mean something, while short names do not, is absurd. Moreover, the expectation that a long name in a program text somehow carries the meaning it possibly has in a different context can lead to confusion.