You're overthinking it. The primary reason why the term has a connotation is because of the attitudes towards the people who bear it, not vice-versa.

Positive and negative terms easily flip based on usage and context. For instance, "dank" as positive, or "special" as negative.

While there is some residual effect sometimes, mostly when there's a problem it's the underlying attitude. If you change the words and not the attitude, the new word just picks up the old connotations.

(Sometimes it's easier to pick a different term than do the connotation-rewrite--I agree that this will probably happen with "beta" though, you know, the current preoccupation with particular connotations of "beta" is itself a pretty recent phenomenon--but the overall influence is small.)

(This is a different case from having multiple options for referring to something and intentionally picking one with extra negative connotations. Rather, the question is whether to try to get a new term established or just rely on the awesome power of context.)