This is a common Unix practice, making a command work differently based on what the name is. This happens over time when two different commands that do almost the same thing gain widespread usage. Eventually someone decides to unify them but want old scripts to still work. They came up with a hack that lets one single program do everything but look like two entirely different programs. The poster child of this is the BusyBox utility which is used in embedded applications, e.g., a phone or router. One application acts like dozens of different utilities to save on space and memory. It's so easy and cost-free to do symbolic links in Unix that there's no real down side to the practice.

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