Ten Utterances

My professor, who's a retired rabbi, pointed out that they're not, in fact, called the "Ten Commandments" but the "Ten Utterances."

I would be curious to learn in what book, chapter, and verse does your professor find the word "utterances". Consider, for example, Deuteronomy 6:1 "Now these are the commandments..." and verse 17 in the same chapter "You shall diligently keep the commandments ..." Modern translations of the Christian Bible today use exactly the same manuscripts as does the modern Torah.

See Ex 34:28 here,

http://www.blueletterbible.org/

and then click on the link for the word "commandments", which takes you here,

http://cf.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=H01697&Version=kjv

and shows you how that Hebrew word was translated in other contexts. And sure enough in 807 places in the KJV, it's translated "word" and only in 20 places "commandment". So indeed it's normally a very generic word ("utterance" or the like) and either it only means commandment in very specific contexts, or it doesn't mean commandment at all and the translator added that idea.