> I'm regularly amazed at how little non-developer/technical users complain about strange and confusing behavior.
Because EVERYTHING a computer does to non-developer/technical users is "strange and confusing". With few exceptions, most people have no idea why their computer does something the way it does, or how they could make it do something different even if they wanted it to. And most of the time, when they complain about it to someone knowledgeable the answer will be some variant on "that's just sort of the way it is". Imagine a world where the names are sorting the way that the OP is looking for, you're still having to explain to someone why the first group sorts "out of order" and the second group sorts "in order". And if they complained, they would almost certainly get an answer that is some variant on "that's just sort of the way it is".
And if you explain in detail about how it works, a lot of people (not all, but quite of few of the more obstreperous types who raise these as CRITICAL BUGS with solutions apparently SO SIMPLE MY DOG COULD IMPLEMENT IT) will then say "I don't know why you have to make it all so complicated, things were simpler and better in v(n-12) in 1997".
If you add an option you're making it more complicated, harder to document and less discoverable, if you don't it's "useless", if you use a heuristic it's "too magical". Eventually someone has to be unhappy.
Because EVERYTHING a computer does to non-developer/technical users is "strange and confusing". With few exceptions, most people have no idea why their computer does something the way it does, or how they could make it do something different even if they wanted it to. And most of the time, when they complain about it to someone knowledgeable the answer will be some variant on "that's just sort of the way it is". Imagine a world where the names are sorting the way that the OP is looking for, you're still having to explain to someone why the first group sorts "out of order" and the second group sorts "in order". And if they complained, they would almost certainly get an answer that is some variant on "that's just sort of the way it is".