I think it's irrelevant what people associate Java with, as long as its success can be attributed partly to the awesomeness of the JVM. There's no other mainstream VM out there that does the optimizations that the JVM is doing, or that has the awesome garbage collectors that the JVM has.
Have you seen the details of the new Java G1 garbage collector or the specs for JSR-292 (InvokeDynamic)? That's awesome evolution right there.
I am not saying JVM isn't awesome. But JVM isn't anymore about Java, than JavaScript is about Java.
Its like calling the Pentium/AMD/ARM as C processing Machines.
The name is deceptive, JVM based languages gives an impression that the languages have to do some thing with Java. Sure they have Java interoperability, but that is different to liking them them with the 'Java programming language' brand. Since JVM was shipped to run Java programs, it was called Java virtual machine.
Otherwise its a virtual machine optimized to run Java programs. When people think of Java its 'Java the language'.
JVM improvements are not necessarily improvement on the Java programming language syntax and semantics.
I always thought Java went very heavy on the frameworks side. Evolution was faster on the frameworks end.