Too much is often made of labels. A ship is a ship is a ship. It has a certain speed, range, armour, set of guns, displacement and dimensions. At times, the building of ships falls into well understood categories. It's only natural that Navies looking for certain characteristics to carry out defined roles will stray into ships that have some characteristics that don't fit the well defined classes. Alaskas are what they are. Any label chosen won't change that.
Look at the endless battle over what a Battle Cruiser is. Heck, it was just a label. All kinds of big gun ships were built, some fast, some slow, some armoured to the hilt, some trading that armour for other characteristics. The real question with these ships is "What were they built to accomplish? Could they accomplish it? How well could the enemy counter them? What you call them has nothing to do with the answers to those questions. Different navies also favoured different names to describe their ship classes, this changed nothing about the ships.
Doesn't matter what you call the Hood or Bismarck. It only matters how they stood up to each other. To me an Alaska is a big ship with big guns and pretty fast. If it comes up against Yamato as part of a surface gunnery duel, it is toast
But them it wasn't built to do that.
Bob B.