Names for magic users

I always liked the name Ritualists in Guild Wars!

Weaver was a good one.

If anyone remembers any good ones for healers I'd love to hear them.

 

Biomancer is one I've used for healers, kind of the lighter side of necromancy.

 

I have been toying with rune-based magic; in essence, the runes to conjure a spell must be written on some sort of medium... For them, I use the term enscribers. Another sort of magic is basically taking the natural magical energies of the world and transmuting them into something else. Transmuters are what I refer to them as.

Another option would be to make something up. For one of my races; the Hara'Ruhk or treebrothers, those that can use magic are referred to as Shur'Aras or Fire Spears. That way I don't need to use something as cliche as "wizard" or "mage".

 

I'm used mystic in the past. (n. a person who claims to attain, or believes in the possibility of attaining, insight into mysteries transcending ordinary human knowledge)

 

Since magic is a made up concept anyway, I made up my own name for the 'magic' in my story! There is only one race who uses it, so the word is in their language.

 

Thaumaturge is the general term I use, with different terms for specialised users. Including:

• Theurge; interacts directly with magical energy
• Alchemist; uses chemicals and herbs to achieve magical effects
• Artificer; constructs arcane devices
• Astromancer; examines the stars to find pathways to other realms

There are other subsets of those and words for different professions they take, but those are the main ones.

 

A favorite of mine also

Don't forget Archmage. Or Arch-...anything. Gives a little weight to the lesser titles.

I have played with words from old Germanic and Slavic languages and came up with:

1. Welthari - One who wields - For a type of very structured, nearly scientific magic. There are various disciplines denoted by prefixes.
2. Voloky - One who believes - For a faith-based magic with no limitations beyond imagination except that it might kill you should you go too far.

 

I've used many names in the past but recently I settled with Arcanist.
I also refer to magic as Arts, so I can have an Arcane Arts Academy (damned be those Alliterative Names)

 

Wizard- Someone who studies magic and practices it.
Witch-Someone who "convinces" the spirits inherent in everything to obey them.
Sorcerer- Someone who has bargained with magical being to gain magical ability
Conjurer- Someone who fakes magical proficiency for financial gain.

From there it depends on specialization or who they work for so for example

An Enchanter is a Wizard who focuses on creating magical objects while an Artificer is an Enchanter with a rich client list and a Informational Thaumaturgist (or I.T.) just maintains the magic mirrors and Akashic crystals most businesses rely on for communication and information retrieval and a Incantation Handler or Wage Mage is a low paid worker who only knows one spell to enchant(like making magic mirrors)

 

sorcerer, temptress, enchantress, enchanter, caster, spellbinder

 

I find it odd that so many people use the term 'magic' in their stories yet don't use 'magician' for people who use it.

The term 'magician' may conjure up images of real world fakery but, when naming something wonderful in your story, isn't half the fun trying to shape people's perceptions of words?

 

You make an interesting point Laurence, that the "fraud" element of the word magician is really one from our world, although it and its antecedents have been used that way from before the time of Christ. I also get your point about the fun to shape people's perception of language.

However people have really ingrained reactions to certain words and language, and it is a lot of work to change their perception of a word, and it might not work turning it into a distraction from your tale.

Personally if I have something wonderful in my story I look for words in English that will convey or invoke that wonder in my reader without making them stop and think about the language.

 

Using the latin prefix for something and -mancer is the standard way of coming up with names for casters who specialize in a specific aspect. For example:

Pyro - fire
Cryo - ice
Necro - death
Bio - living things
Astro - the stars
Chrono - time

Find a good latin root word list such as https://www.learnthat.org/pages/view/roots.html, and build your own names.

 

Those are Greek prefixes. The Latin is as follows:

Fire: Ignis
Ice: Crustallus
Death: Mortis
Life: Vita
Star: Stella
Time: Tempus

 

I stand corrected. Despite my dabbling in constructed languages, I am not a linguist.