ASP.NET is rumored to drop the "Core" name somewhere in major version 7/8/9, just as .NET dropped "Core" in .NET 5, which is a higher version number than both sides of the fork. There was briefly an ASP.NET 6 (technically, the baroque "ASP.NET 5 MVC 6"). There's never yet been a version higher than that. I think part of the hold up there were some builds of the old Entity Framework made to version 8 or 9, and ASP.NET is not likely to drop "Core" until EF Core is able to drop "Core"?