[Al_The_Man]

This is an issue I have always had particularly with Gantry tables, To me the convention of where you view or position your self to operate the machine should really dictate as to how the axis is named.
Often commercial gantrys are automatically given the X axis to the 'long' side, but the operator station is generally at the end of the table, so the X axis is actually up and down when looking into the part, and the Y is left to right, which goes against convention of when viewing down (Z) the X should be from left to right and the Y from towards one and away (Y).
If I set up a Gantry, I always use the view-point method.
Al.