[barrkel]

It could hardly be otherwise, or the JVM would need to do overload resolution at runtime, which would not be a pleasant experience for anyone.

[mbel]

Well, it could just use function name and leave it to javac/kotlin/other JVM front end to handle overloads and generate unique names. Although that wouldn't work nice with refection and other run-time features I guess.

[masklinn]

It would also screw up interop. You'd basically have the issue everyone has when trying to call C++.