-1 or me
It breaks the type_argument pattern and it breaks common usage (stdmod should adhere to existing conventions where they make sense) .
It true that path might be ambiguos and basename and dirname may generally give a clearer idea, but in Puppet domain the path namevar is well known and used.
We  all know that puppet language itself is not a masterpiece in naming conventions, but  that's what we have and I think that in Puppet world _path is somehow less ambiguous.