In this case, "acquire" isn't ambiguous. All the other lock types actually acquire a write lock, so it makes sense to have the operation with the same name they use also acquire a write lock on this object.

I realized that read/write locks are actually shared/exclusive locks, which might form the basis for a name that doesn't collide with RLock. Boost (http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_43_0/doc/html/thread/synchronization.html#thread.synchronization.mutex_types.shared_mutex) uses shared_mutex for the concept, so SLock or SELock? There are some algorithms that write while the lock is acquired non-exclusive, so "shared" is actually a better name for the concept, even though posix and Java used read/write.

The possibility of lock downgrading (turning an exclusive lock into a shared lock, without allowing any other exclusive acquisitions in the mean time) might inform your decision about how to name "unlock".