This issue has come up before, and it is a sensible suggestion.
However, there's a larger consideration, which is consistency with
an established convention used in SRFI-1:
  - left-to-right is no suffix
  - right-to-left is -right suffix
This convention is going to come up again in other SRFIs (e.g., vectors).
So let us stick firmly to it.
    -Olin

------
   From: xxxxxx@alum.mit.edu
   Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000 15:53:12 -0400

   I'd like to propose a change that has no semantic effect on the SRFI,
   just renaming of string-trim, string-trim-right and string-trim-both.

   I think string-trim-both would be the most commonly-used of the three;
   it should be named string-trim.

   The string-trim-right procedure should be renamed because of the
   left-to-right language assumption.

   CURRENT		       PROPOSED
   string-trim	       string-trim-head
   string-trim-right      string-trim-tail
   string-trim-both       string-trim

   Note that in MIT Scheme (string-trim " hi ") ==> "hi".