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From: Stephane Chazelas <stephane.chazelas@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: gnu.bash.bug
Subject: Re: Pathname expansion vs. filename expansion
Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2019 16:15:42 +0100
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2019-08-20 10:08:10 -0400, Chet Ramey:
[...]
> However, at some point -- I can't find it now -- the GNU documentation
> standards recommended using "filename" and "filename expansion," reserving
> "pathname" for colon-separated values like $PATH.
[...]

I think you're refering to:

https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/GNU-Manuals.html#GNU-Manuals

GNU> Please do not use the term “pathname” that is used in Unix
GNU> documentation; use “file name” (two words) instead. We use the
GNU> term “path” only for search paths, which are lists of directory
GNU> names. 

So I guess that should be "file name expansion"

That's probably not the right place to argue whether that GNU
recommendations makes sense, but note that the FTP RFC (1985
https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc959.txt, so predates POSIX if not
the GNU project) defines pathname as

pathname

  Pathname is defined to be the character string which must be
  input to a file system by a user in order to identify a file.
  Pathname normally contains device and/or directory names, and
  file name specification.  FTP does not yet specify a standard
  pathname convention.  Each user must follow the file naming
  conventions of the file systems involved in the transfer.


-- 
Stephane