Let's go ahead with "Turner."
The lemming literally does turn around mid-action, and due to the fact that SLX isn't a 3D game and there will never be a "Turner" skill (and, this proposed action isn't a skill action anyway), we should be able to avoid any possible confusion there.
Meanwhile, I think mid-animation in-physics turning will also be OK; it's quite clear from the sprite what's happening, and as long as we're careful with what to allow assignment-wise, it shouldn't create too many in-game problems or bugs (but, we can never be too sure about that, so let's just try it out and see how it goes).
Next up, sprite creation...!