> first and rest do not make sense as replacements for car and cdr in the general case, however, and if all you want is to have them as synonyms for when they do make sense, then Lisp has been providing that since the 70s.

And were it so that one really felt that LISP were incomplete without `first` and `rest`, wouldn't it be trivial to wrap them in custom functions (ie alias them)?

Don't get me wrong, but of all the things that will make learning LISP a bit of work, adding a couple of utility functions isn't on the radar...