Why did they have a name for the alien when they at least were pretending they didn’t know or believed it existed?
They called it a xenomorph
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They did not have a name for the alien.
"Xenomorph" is a blanket term for "something of an unknown shape". It serves a dual purpose when it is mentioned in the movie.
One is to show Gorman is inexperienced (only one mission under his belt so far! Other than the trainings / simulations that is), and he tries to hide this, by pulling a scientific term. If you don't stop for a second and think about it, it sounds like Gorman is specific here. He tries to make that impression. However, he says "a xenomorph", and not "the Xenomorph" or "a creature / organism called Xenomorph". The others don't understand him, they even ask "... a what?" And Gorman is repeating the term, but since it means "an unknowns shaped something", he cannot elaborate. And that is brilliant: by having him repeating the term without adding anything new about what he is referring to, it is clear he is clueless and just saying "an unknown shaped thing"... but in Greek! It screams "I'm book smart and you are not!". And the demeanor of the marines screams: "Screw this booksmart guy, he has no idea about a real encounter with hostile forces - known or unknown". So one purpose is to characterize Gorman, and show us how utterly out of his league he is when trying to communicate with the marines.
The second is to show how all the crew - except for Ripley for obvious reasons - are utterly unable to even conceptualize what they are up against - despite Ripley's efforts. I mean she is clearly still traumatized by the event, when she tries to recall it, she seems weak. But there is a difference between being weak, and having encountered something so utterly bizarre and horrible that you are unable to present it properly. But the marines are not so nuanced. They only see a civilian got spooked by something on a spaceship once - of course there is the fact that six (technically five) other people died, but hey, they were also civilians, right? They are exhibiting a coping mechanism right out of the gate.
So anyway, in her botched attempt of explaining what happened, she again refers to the alien as "it" and "something". "Something" was stuck on Kane's face. "It" started to... burst out of his chest, she tried to say, before being cut off by the marines. They are not interested. They think this is just some general mission with no clear objective (apart from finding out what happened to the colonists), and - again - this "Snow White" civilian was scared, her crew was incompetent, etc. No big deal.
At no point later in the movie do they refer to aliens as "xenomorphs" or even "xenos" as it would be convenient in combat situations - thus showing clearly that Gorman was not referring to this specific creature. And of course not, he had no experience about them, and even Ripley did not have a clear term for them, despite her first hand experience with one of them.
You might be confused by the fact that other, subsequent Alien-related media picked up this term, and had references to the aliens as "Xenomorphs" or "Xenos" by characters or in description. But that is just the authors picking up the scientific sounding term, maybe some of them misunderstood it as a specific term (essentially, Gorman managed to deceive them, and they bought his parading around with this scientific term, hook, line and sinker).
Practically, even if there were some characters in Aliens who formed a consensus around how they are going to refer to the aliens as xenomorphs, it would not make sense to do so. In case they encounter any other unknown alien lifeform, it creates confusion about which "xenomorph" are they referring to? In the universe of Alien, it seems there are already multiple alien lifeforms known (e.g: Arcturians), but maybe there are some unknowns. And they all could be referred to as "xenomorphs" - using a blanket term, which only makes sense if you are talking about the unknown alien lifeforms as a group, and not at all when you are trying to talk about something specific.
Oh, and one more thing... (Columbo)
I just checked, and it doesn't help that the Alien(s) wiki has an article called "Xenomorph" which is describing the alien species that Ripley encountered... which is... wrong.
https://aliens.fandom.com/wiki/Xenomorph
At least, they have a more specific designation mentioned in the first sentence:
"The Xenomorph XX121[3], better known just as Xenomorph or the "Alien", is an extraterrestrial hive-based endoparasitoid with a multi-staged life cycle, possibly originating from the planet Xenomorph Prime."
So this term "Xenomorph XX121" is at least specifically referring to one species, which makes things better. And I won't fault the creators of the wiki, since wikis are notorius for including all bits and pieces of published information about the subject matter at hand... so let's say they are including all the "Expanded universe" material here.
Point is: in the first two movies , there is no specific name for the alien. The term "xenomorph" kind of ran away, and got picked up by many as something that was convenient to use for referring to the alien, but that ultimately does not make real sense - as I elaborated above already.
Very comprehensive answers.
shareits always bugged me people have referred to the alien(s) as "xenomorph" ever since like its the officiallt designated name for the species , when its just something Gorman said one that as sati_84 says is a blanket term for "something of an unknown shape".
This would be like early American settlers not hearing back from the Lewis and Clark expedition and saying "all we know is that we've lost contact with the expedition and a carnivore may be involved."
Then the rescue team finds out they were attacked by Grizzly bears.
That doesn't mean they had a name for what they didn't know, just that they suspected it could be a carnivore.
I'm so happy the internet didn't exist back then.. Honest to God, no one would've thought of this sort of stuff back in the day
shareagreed, At least we can ignore it , it must be worse for the writers and director , cos its their stuff.
Lucas wouldnt have known in 1977 that every single prop he used would one day have its own wikipedia page with a full backstory.