What Shall We Call The Wizard?

Inventing some terms

Have you ever heard of the Far-Eastern movie with a necromancer? I know nothing of it but what I learned from a meme: the translator didn’t know the term, so the subtitles talked about the “zombie wrangler.”

How wonderful!

I did something like this in Spells In Secret¹ where Kenneth and the other pupils are in the tower for stonework, though they are not called stone-workers.

If the magic the wizard uses has a settled core, one can call the spell-slinger after it. Fire, stars, wind, healing -- and then one can run amok on the verbs. Fire-flinger, star-dreamer, wind-dancer, heal-hand.

Logically, of course, presuming that magic is a technology² that evolves like any other form of technology, some will grow to be inaccurate. Originally, the chief job of a fire-flinger was to throw fireballs in battle. Nowadays, with all the steampunk technology, it is to monitor and control the boilers. A fire-flinger spends more time keeping fire from flinging itself far than he does flinging it.

Or perhaps he spends less time with fire than you might think. After all, it could evolve into a whole system of magic from the roots of flinging fire.

The problem is, of course, that such vivid terms wear their origins on the sleeve in a way the standard terms don’t. How many people will complain that a sorcerer never casts lots? Or even fastidiously avoids games of chance despite the very meaning of his job is sortarius, one who tells fortunes by lot?

Necromancer is still close enough that people will sometimes complain that “-mancy” means divination, and a necromancer should be someone who talks to the dead to divine things.

Perhaps the wisest route would be to let the term mutate once the origin was lost, but then -- what is the point? A vivid and unique term is merely a piece of verbiage that the reader has to memorize once it means nothing owing to semantic drift. Unless the terms are very few, and their origin actually comes up, and probably becomes relevant, it’s probably just strangeness for its own sake.³ Better to use the classic terms to sort them out.⁴

On the other hand, as long as the term is still reliable, there’s no reason not to use them. It does indicate what sort of magic the world has, but that can be useful as well as limiting.

There are various ways a writer could handle the verb. Perhaps there are all sorts of verbs, and really, only the noun clues you into significant knowledge. A wind-weaver does not need a loom; a heal-singer may hum, but may not; a water-breaker may not even divide water up.

Perhaps the verb is deeply significant. Those who are “singers” do in fact chant their spells, and those who are “dancers” do in fact enspell things by their rhythmic motions. (Hmm -- to music? If you have fire-singers, fire-drummers, and fire-dancers, you could get up a quite complex set-up. Possibly with a circle-scriber to lay out the dance floor beforehand.)

This creates a certain degree of specialization. The noun, of course, dictates what your spell-slinger slings in the way of spells. You need a fire-flinger to deal with your child’s fever. You need a water-weaver to counteract the dehydration. Etc. As these examples show, the noun can be treated as narrower or broader, but if it does not define, there’s no point in not just calling them a wizard unless you go digging very deep.

If you use the verb as technique, not result, you may get no more narrowing from that. But depending on how you work it, you may need either a fire-singer or a fire-dancer for some things.

This sort of specialization has its costs, of course. Are there any hedge wizards and herb witches who pick and choose spells from many schools? Getting scorned by the purists who can only support themselves in large cities because of the narrowness of their specialties? Do people pick up spells here and there, just because the powerful wizards are hard to get to, at least the ones you need?

Everything has its world-building price. Even amusing yourself with the names you bestow on wizards.

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