We should also not forget that a lot of maths is spoken (in classes and seminars) so there the distinction between, say, \theta and \vartheta would be lost was they are pronounced the same...
Indeed. I once who had a lecturer who used p, rho, and "curly p" as different symbols -- the latter was the Cauchy Principal Part. Suffice to say my (handwritten) notes were full of little arrows saying "pee", "rho" and "squiggle".
