Don't get me wrong I greatly appreciate new custom figures. But what gets me is if someone goes through all the trouble of making a custome figure that is human, WHY RENAME THE BODY PARTS AND DIALS? Why LTHIGH instead of Left Thigh. It makes poses useless. Now I don't expect any pose to work perfectly but a lot of time some p4 poses or some old Mike and Vickey poses can get you about 80% there. And worse, sometimes the left thigh is LTHIGH and the right thigh is RIGHT THIGH. And the axis dials get renamed as well in some cases.

So why do custom modellers do this especially when the figure is pretty much humanoid to begin with?

Ditto.  Especially when they change the Internal Name, which
is supposed to be the constant text. 

And especially when the figures with new names are "standard"
figures developed by the maker of Poser, whoever that might be 
this week!

Renaming also makes Python scripts tricky.  I can sometimes
compensate by doing a string combination (look for anything
with Left and Thigh regardless of placement and case) but
that doesn't always work.

The name on the dial or body part isn't important (except to the user for identification).  As ockham notes, the thing of absolutely critical importance is the use of standard Poser internal names.  It almost seems that some of these creators don't realize this importance - it can make or break a figure completely as much of Poser's built-in functionality is aimed towards these internal name sakes.

There really is a need for a complete reference to making Poser figures.  "Secrets of Figure Creation with Poser 5" is clearly the biblical reference here - but not many figure creators make certain to have and use it.  It could use some more particular details - such as the known standard Poser internal names for body parts and dials (not the GetStringRes stuff but the actual internal names) - but this is a perfect place to start.

Just to be snotty ;), the burden of this blunder solely rests on the shoulders of whoever owns Poser.  If they want quality compliant figures they should clearly provide the necessary guidelines.

Yup, official standards would help .... but they'd also hurt if applied too
strictly.  One advantage of Poser over other 3d apps is its forgiving nature
in terms of filenames and file contents.  Much of the innovation would
have been halted if Poser had a strong 'gag reflex'  when consuming files.

Doesn't have to be draconian or rigid but having that information easily available as 'guidelines' (like how the Pirate Code is only a  'guideline') would help avoid these situations (hopefully).

As has been indicated, the name on the dial is unimportant. Only the internal name counts for poses and symmetry: That being said, my original reason for renaming body parts was my inexperience as a figure creator, but I quickly discovered why the parts must be named a certain way in order to function with symmetry.

maybe when some of them make human models, their target audience wasn't poser users. especially if ya consider that they didn't use poser to model it.

I think what would makes the lightbulb moment for a figure creator is when you try out a library pose, Walk Designer -- or even the Symmetry commands.  I still remember my astonished delight when for a lark I clicked the "aphrodite arising from the waves" pose from the P4 library and my stocky, barrel-bodied, three-fingered robot made such a good try you could actually recognize the source!