AppleScript: Get name of files in a folder without extension

Have been dipping my toes into some AppleScript today. Boy do I prefer languages that are not so wordy and English... And boy is some things not the easiest to do... Anyways, I wanted to get the names of all files in a certain folder. This is quite easy, but the twist is that I didn't want the file extension. This was not so easy...

I asked a question on StackOverflow and got some code that worked. I then rewrote it a bit and ended up with this:

-- Gets a list of filenames from the
on filenames from _folder

  -- Get filenames and extensions
  tell application "Finder"
    set _filenames to name of every file of _folder
    set _extensions to name extension of every file of _folder
  end tell

  -- Collect names (filename - dot and extension)
  set _names to {}
  repeat with n from 1 to count of _filenames

    set _filename to item n of _filenames
    set _extension to item n of _extensions

    if _extension is not "" then
      set _length to (count of _filename) - (count of _extension) - 1
      set end of _names to text 1 thru _length of _filename
    else
      set end of _names to _filename
    end if

  end repeat

  -- Done

  return _names
end filenames

-- Example usage

return filenames from (path to desktop)