The proponents of this terminology claimed that it was intuitive and that any child would automatically know which was which

Yes, the terms we learned early on are always the most logical, the easiest to retain and understand, etc. It's how the language we speak from birth just happens to be the best suited for communication, argumentation, etc. There's a French linguist, whose name I've forgotten, who seriously argued that French was the most logical language because word order in sentences was the same as the sequence of one's thoughts. I have the same momentary confusion with open and closed vowels (used mainly in Romance linguistics).