Is the name in the xml more than an identifier? Isn't the actual screenname localised?
So you'd just have to know where to put a language file so that in English your 'wood' resource is called "Carbon" or whatever you want to call it?
In GAE, you could just have
wood=Carbon in the TECHTREE language file.
Of course, you could always just run a simple find and replace. For example, in notepad++, open the find and replace window (ctrl + f), go to the find in files tab, set the path to your techtree folder, and replace
<resource name="old_resource_name" with
<resource name="new_resource_name". That should work for all upgrades and units to my knowledge, and can't think of any instances it would appear in besides that. You'd have to manually rename the folder and XMl name of the resource, though.