The only reason I could think of is because of duplex streams (stream.Duplex), which implement both stream.Readable and stream.Writable interfaces (https://nodejs.org/dist/latest-v5.x/docs/api/stream.html#stream_class_stream_duplex) are readable and writable stream at the same time. To differentiate between end of reading and end of writing on the stream you must have a different event fired. SO, for Duplex streams end is end of reading and finish is end of writing.