Welcome! Yeah ... told ya it would take some effort to understand. :|
Filenames aren't really 'utterly meaningless' considering the history of/progresssion of backups. And that depends upon one's admin of the Moodle. The GUI could use more admin only tools (IMHO) - but then again, maybe not - depending. Have found it difficult to admin everything one needs to admin by GUI alone so have learned DB queries from command line and plain ole command line access quite handy in certain cases.
The filenames do include the shortname of the course ... depending upon things that could be handy to know ... it also includes a date/time stamp in the name. That too is handy to know. However, one has to use the DB to see the location of those backups ... and who made them.
The one thing about saving to a designated directory is granting teachers access to that directory means yet another step with the file system - especially if one's goal is to restrict teachers from seeing all other course backups ... ie, they see just their own courses.
Nothing is perfect. So have learned to find 'work-arounds' and in some cases, 'live with it' - it is what it is and proposals for changes to behavior could lead to yet more settings/forms options etc. and privacy settings, etc. ... and if implemented, 'omicron testing'.
2 cent opinions of course ... 'spirit of sharing', Ken