Traditional assembler, and higher level compilers work with several memory segments, according to intended use. Hence, there is a data segment, a stack segment, a bss,
I suggest that the meaning references the assembler (in that case that is for what we are speaking about) language is text, readable text. So the segment .text can be traduced as segment where the code program (text) is written and where the text of the program is, but last is called segment .data. Also it can be called segment .code because is the segment where the program's code is.
In my opinion should be just called: .code (which is text and also it logically differenciates from the other sections).