Yeah and I'm no fan of companies coming up with fancy names that make something sound better than it is or outright deceive either but in the case of Apple and the Retina Display name I don't think that's really what happened. At the time when they first started using it on the iPhone it was arguably the best display on a mobile phone, easily in the top 3 and the concept of doubling the pixels for the sake of density really hadn't been done much prior(not saying it never had, but it was by no means the norm), since they started we've seen the entire mobile and now notebook and all-in-one industries pivot and start offering high density displays on everything and it is becoming more normalized. Apple isn't entirely responsible for this(it's mostly a byproduct of better display tech from OEMs like Sharp and Samsung being made available), but they did help push it along by popularizing the concept.
But by today the term serves a different usefulness which is simple product distinguishing. Which, I actually think Apple backed themselves into a funny corner here on this specific product but the basic premise of being able to say "iMac" and "iMac with Retina Display" as a product differentiator isn't a case of abusing a trademark name to deceive people or whatever and in the case of iMacs at least, the previous 27" iMac was 1440p like the new 12" MacBook if they had called the MacBook display "1440p" instead of Retina, while accurate in the strictest sense of the word it wouldn't really tell you that it was a new display and might outright cause some confusion.
Still, I think Apple kind of backed themselves into a corner anyway. The new MacBook is being pushed as just "MacBook" not "MacBook with Retina Display" and not "MacBook Air" even though its design is more "air" than the existing MacBook Air" which probably better deserves at this point to be called just "MacBook" especially since they don't even have retina displays!
In enough years(Probably 2, 3 tops) none of this will matter. By then I imagine virtually all displays on Mac and Windows-based products will be high density. So much ado about nothing. But so it goes with tech.