$ mysql
Welcome to the MariaDB monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MariaDB connection id is 32
Server version: 10.1.26-MariaDB-0+deb9u1 Debian 9.1
Copyright (c) 2000, 2017, Oracle, MariaDB Corporation Ab and others.
$ mysql --version
mysql Ver 15.1 Distrib 10.1.26-MariaDB, for debian-linux-gnu (i686) using readline 5.2
It is pretty clear to anybody ever run the tool that it is MariaDB.
Seems to me this is a non issue then.
I guess not everybody reads those, and I've already conceded that its something that ought to warrant a warning prompt or something.
But they didn't just change it for no reason.