Thanks for the report.  You are confusing Python packages and the distributable things that are also called packages (not by most of the distutils docs though where they are named distributions).  PEP 8 covers conventions for naming modules (including packages); PEP 345 defines project names (in a very open way though).  I am not sure the docs need to do more; I will reply to the distutils-sig messages and read the link you provided.