They are called valve covers for historic reasons. Note that they don't actually cover the spark plug wells either, they surround them. Note also that there are coil covers over the valve covers. Some people more accurately call the valve covers cam covers, since they do cover the cams in our overhead cam cars. They are also sometimes (accurately) called cylinder head covers.
There is a similar problem with the coils. They are correctly called COP (Coil-Over-Plug), since that is what they are. However, many call them coil packs, which they are not. The first distributorless ignition systems used coil packs. These were packs of coils (usually two or three) together, and usually each coil in the pack fired two cylinders.