List and Library Names and Titles
When you create a new list or library in SharePoint 2010, you are prompted for the name of the list or library. If you select the More Options (on the create dialog), you can see the description and other configuration items but not the title. This leads some users to select a long name to serve as title. While there is nothing wrong with that, list and library names are part of the URL and are usually replaced with special encoding. For example, a space becomes %20 as is the case for Shared Documents (http://site/Shared%20Documents). SharePoint uses the same name for internal reference and for display.
You can change the list or library title after it is created from the library or list settings. So, you may pick a short name with no spaces or special characters and, after it is created, you go to list or library settings and from General Settings, you select the first item (Title, description and navigation) where you can edit the Name with your own, more descriptive words (yes, it is called Name, not Title). SharePoint will still use the original short name internally, but will display the new title in quick launch, bread crumb and other navigation.
The above also applies to views and you probably noticed that the All Documents view is referred to as AllItems in the URL. Just create the view with a short name, save it then modify it (the view name is what is displayed and you can see the URL referred to as web address.
Sites and workspaces are a bit different. You do have the option to provide both a title and a URL at creation time.
For list and library columns, you can rename columns after they are created, but you should be careful if you want to refer to these in other lists (as lookup) or in SharePoint Designer 2010. SharePoint uses the first name internally and you may lose track of which is which, so choose the names carefully (spaces are encoded differently for columns).
