I think it's arguable either way, honestly. When you order a pizza, would you say it is a Pizza Request, a Toppings Request, a Transaction Request or a Request for Pizza with My Toppings Merged into the Default Configuration?
Pull Request makes sense to me, Merge Request makes sense to me too. To others, one may resonate more. Rosetta Stone posts like this can be helpful to people who are used to a particular vernacular, and I don't think the semantic distinction is itself the point. Other than the Gist comparison (which I mentioned in another comment), I think this post was helpful.
It's truly inspiring how _present_ Gitlab are in the communities they serve.
Yeah, you are right. "Pull request" in itself could be parsed as a command, but it is a thing really. Used in a command you would say "Send pull request". Where send is the verb and "pull request" is the object. In my native language it would actually be a single word. I have seen some people write it as pull-request, which removes the ambiguity.
Note that "Merge request" doesn't solve this problem.
From a user-interface design perspective I would say it would be bad to have a button or link that solely says "pull request" or "merge request". It should probably be preceded by a verb such as view, send or process.
Also, pulling a pull request or merging a merge request is just weird and doesn't make sense.
