Doesn't english differentiate between nouns and names? The name of the language is 'Perl', like Peter, Paul and Mephistopheles, and the noun meaning the interpreter is 'perl'. I don't see any problems with the distinction of those two, but maybe that's because I'm not a native english speaker.

Also, language is evolving, Perl moves on to version 6, maybe english should come along too *scnr* ;)