What's your magic called?

[Worldbreaker]

Like in the night angel trilogy by Brent weeks, it's called talent. In Mistborn it is allomancy. I'm building a world right now and I don't want the magic to simply be called magic, and I was wondering what some of you may have called your magic?

[Devor]

I think the Final Fantasy games did a good job with that. They tend to use words like Magicite or Materea for the physical stuff that their magic comes from.

I've been trying to come up with something just like that for my own world. There's supposed to be a little "Magic" in a lot of common elements, but only certain people can manipulate it. I want to find a name for the substance they're manipulating as opposed to the effect they're creating.

[Ravana]

I call it "magic."

On the other hand, magic in my world(s) tends to consist of multiple different techniques, each of which receives its own appropriate name… of which there might be any number, depending on the scope of the work. But it's all "magic," no matter what the specific techniques or power sources may be.

Calling magic something specific implies the way it works: allomancy isn't "magic," it's magic that works through a certain process. It just also happens to be the dominant form of magic in that world… and the other forms are based off it. "Talent" implies (to me, at least) a person with the ability to perform magic, not magic itself: I haven't read the works you reference, but I can't see someone "casting a talent spell" or "burned at the stake for practicing talent" popping up in them. At any rate, I don't see any virtue is changing the name of something just to have a different name for it. (I also see no virtue in having only certain people able to perform magic at all—that is, it's something inborn, and the majority of people can never learn it, no matter what—but that's a personal peeve.)

That having been said… using specific appropriate names can add considerable personality to a work. They can be convenient shorthands, providing readers some expectations as to what a given character can (and can't) do. And using inappropriate ones can really screw things up, for me: I hate it when someone calls a magician a "necromancer," and then doesn't have him do a thing involving the dead… just uses it as a synonym for "magician." A witch-hunter might do this, to prejudice his case; the magician himself never would.

[Worldbreaker]

Hmmm idk I just feel like magic can be too generic a term, and magic means something unexplainable(inherently, most books tend to explain it thoroughly, which makes calling it magic redundant) electronics would be magic to a person from 2,000 years ago, but to us it's perfectly normal and explainable. In my book's world "magic" is common and explainable. That's why I was thinking I shouldn't call it magic. So I was wondering what other people called their systems.

And Ravana, it annoys me too when people use the wrong term for something too, such as your necromancer example

[Devor]

(I also see no virtue in having only certain people able to perform magic at all—that is, it's something inborn, and the majority of people can never learn it, no matter what—but that's a personal peeve.)

With the exception of Harry Potter (where pretty much every important character did use magic), I agree with you, and I've tried to build my magical system entirely around that premise. I just don't want to give away any details as it's one of the ideas I'm using which I consider to be completely "stealable," even though I've tried not to be too paranoid about that.

[Hans]

As already been said you could use "magic" for the general term, mostly used by commoners (who on earth also called electricity and such magic for a long time) and more specific ones for people who know what they are doing.

An alternative is Thaumaturgy from Greek thauma = miracle, ergon = work. But maybe a miracle worker has a too big religious aspect.

In one of my worlds magic is either shamanism (getting ghosts and spirits to work) or daemonology (trying the same with daemons). The first needs big rituals and has only small effects, the second is much more powerful but needs blood and virgins and all that stuff. Both is called magic by most people that do not see the difference.

I do not have a problem with some sort of "talent" for magic users. Some people are just better in these things. Most people have very limited abilities, never train it and thus are non magic users.
Like not everyone is an artist. Those without talent are less likely to train their drawing skill. And thus "can not draw". Maybe everyone could become a fair artist, but why invest lots of time when you could never be better than mediocre?

[Terra Arkay]

@Devor: Yeah, I take a lot of inspiration from Final Fantasy when it comes to magic. I was thinking mana...

[Foxmc]

In it's rawest material form, I call it Lavun.

[The Grey Sage]

I use a form of energy called 'Cri', not really magic per say but it similar. Cri is commonly physically manifested as upside down transulcent flames. Pretty simple but when techniques start getting used it becomes more complicated. As stated before I see no reason to not let everyone access the magic or whatever but if everyone does use it then there can be way too many powerful people or just too many influential people for a story to really be cleaned up. Also, I use 'Cri' as a base energy but I also include things like 'Stepping' (basically teleportation) and 'Riac' (which is polar to Cri) to add more to the powers available along with alchemy and more cool stuff. So basically naming can also help you organize the people who can readily use it and the powers that stem from it.

[mythique890]

I'm trying to figure out what to call mine. In one story, I call it "the gift" and I'm fine with that, even though it's been done before. I haven't worked out the particulars, but it's pretty generic magic (at least until I start writing it again and make things hard for myself).

My other story (the one with dragons) is giving me more of a problem. In the story, dragons are leftover dinosaurs who have been around and sentient for about 80 million years. Humans have been around for between 100,000 and 200,000 years... can you imagine where we'll be in another 79.8 million? I can't. So I want to go with the idea that these types of powers evolved and have specialized in the different races, but I don't know what to call with it. The problem is compounded by the fact that I have about 12 different races of dragon and each of them have their own "systems" and cultures, so they'll probably each have their own name for it as well as one common name. Ugh.