Kinda. Sometimes these are called "lvalues" (because they go on the left-hand side of an assignment statement), or perhaps "places", or some similar name. It depends on the language, and what languages the designer was influenced/inspired by when they were doing the design work. That leaves "variable" to just refer to the simplest case.
Oh, and just for the record, your friend _is_ a programmer. Maybe it's secondary to the mathematics, but nobody is ever just one thing.
Oh, and just for the record, your friend _is_ a programmer. Maybe it's secondary to the mathematics, but nobody is ever just one thing.