I was about to say that confusing the first two makes perfect sense because it's been a long time since the Desktop has had any real purpose beyond displaying a background image. Then I realised that the kind of people we're talking about probably have a shortcut for every single application they've ever installed on their desktop and have no idea how to delete them.
I've seen the ones on the second set meaning completely different things from one application or environment to another. Even switching the meaning between themselves.
"Menu bar", "dock", "toolbar", "menu", and other similar terms are used more or less at random.
It's simply not common for the average user to know the names of UI components.