Agreed.
"Rationality" can also have some bad or incorrect-from-our-perspective connotations — Spock, Ayn Rand, sociopathic CDT-like agents in economic/game-theoretic models, etc. — but at least without the "ism" it doesn't sound like we're pledging our allegiance to an ideology, and we can explain what we mean by it without people saying "But philosophers X, Y, and Z were 'rationalists' and they didn't believe that!"
Another first response I tend to get:
"So, if it were rational to kill yourself, would you do it?"
I feel that the term "rationalism", as opposed to "rationality", or "study of rationality", has undesirable connotations. My concerns are presented well by Eric Drexler in the article For Darwin’s sake, reject "Darwin-ism" (and other pernicious terms):
So, my suggestion is to use "rationality" consistently and to avoid using "rationalism". Via similarity to "scientist" and "physicist", "rationalist" doesn't seem to have the same problem. Discuss.
(Typical usage on Less Wrong is this way already, 3720 Google results for "rationality" and 1210 for "rationalist", against 251 for "rationalism". I've made this post as a reference for when someone uses "rationalism".)