MAL> Please leave the function as it is, i.e. a 1-1 mapping to the
MAL> official, non-changing Unicode name reference (including
MAL> spelling errors, etc). Same with code points that have no name.

Since we have code points with no name - it is not 1-1 mapping but 1 to 0 or 1.

Unicode Standard recommends using "Code Point Labels" "To provide unique, meaningful labels for code points that do not have character names." (Section 4.9.)

These labels are not very useful:

Control: control-NNNN
Reserved: reserved-NNNN
Noncharacter: noncharacter-NNNN
Private-Use: private-use-NNNN
Surrogate: surrogate-NNNN

According to the description in NameAliases.txt:

# The formal name aliases are part of the Unicode character namespace, which
# includes the character names and the names of named character sequences.

I believe this means that formal name aliases are as official as the character names.

If we don't change the default, what is the downside in adding an optional type argument to unicodedata.name()?  After all, according to the standard, aliases *are* names, just a different *type* of names.