Naming Suggestions

[Pagliacci he/him]

I'm developing a magic system that relates to the manipulation of the four fundamental forces of the universe/nature: gravity, electromagnetism, weak force and strong force.

I'm trying to come up with a name for this magic. Any suggestions?

[+Invocation]

Cāra Nidhī

Dörvön

Véier Faktoren

Četiri Osnovi

Zinayi zofunikira

Dört temelleri

Çar bingehîn

Neli põhialust

[I think I am here. he/him]

Dynamilancy

[Yezrien]

Can you describe the magic a little? How it's used might point to a good name.

[Ubeka he/him]

Could you give some examples of basic abilities for each of the fundamental forces? Especially in regards to weak and strong interaction I'm curious to see what you came up with.

In regards to what to call this: perhaps start from the hot topic in Physics of bundling together all these fields into one (the Grander Unifying Theory) and call it something like the Unitary Art. Or maybe just capital-F-Forcing?

[kaellok he/him]

I'm assuming that you're wanting a name like Allomancy or Bending or Channeling, which suggests the name of the magic system (and what it's called in-world) as well as what its practitioners would be called. 

Allomancer = alloy (mix of metals) + mancy (divination).  Most of the allomantic powers enhance or give extra senses to the user, so the -mancy/-mancer suffix makes a lot of sense.

Benders from Avatar take existing elemental stuff (fire/earth/air/water) and move it around, often times bending it to get it where they want to go.

Channelers from The Wheel of Time act as literal conduits (channels) for the One Power. 

There are tons of other examples, too.  But basically, the important thing in the naming consistently seems to be referring to how the power is used or accessed, rather than what the power is.  Otherwise the Benders from Avatar might have been Elementalists instead, and we would have seen the magic used in entirely different ways.

I am a little partial to calling your magic-users Fundamentalists who practice Fundamentalism (because the Four Fundamental Forces of the Universe--GET IT?!), but that is a legit terrible idea and you should not do that.

[Quantus he/him]

It kind of depends, How do you want to name each of the four subcategories.  Bending is nice because it naturally fits slapping the element on the front while standing alone as a generic term for all for four, while Bending in particular because it's used as a verb and evokes a sense of externally warping something already there.  But my point is that you need to find a fitting set of Five names.

 

As @kaellok said, what you use will depend a lot on how you want the magic to be viewed in context.  So a fundamental question might be whether you want it to be a Verb which characterizes the action of using the magic, or a Noun that characterizes the user of the magic. For example: Are your people described as Using Lashings or Being Windrunners?  Or is it all just Awakeners doing Awakening?

 

That being said, here's a random suggestion.  Since your talking about the four scientific fundamental forces I went with more academic than mysticism:

Call the Magic force Impetus, call a generic user a Conatus, but with more colloquial names for people who use each one, possibly with a second set of names/titles for those that can use combinations, all very descriptive of their flavors of abilities.  Very Metallic arts in concept

Gravity = Attractors (slang: Pullers, Crushers, etc)

Electromagnetism = Oscillators (Slang: pulsers, zappers, Ringers, etc)

Weak and Strong = ??? (Depends on the sorts of visible abilities each will manifest)

 

 

[artiestroke she/her]

On 11/10/2018 at 0:41 PM, Quantus said:

It kind of depends, How do you want to name each of the four subcategories.  Bending is nice because it naturally fits slapping the element on the front while standing alone as a generic term for all for four, while Bending in particular because it's used as a verb and evokes a sense of externally warping something already there.  But my point is that you need to find a fitting set of Five names.

 

As @kaellok said, what you use will depend a lot on how you want the magic to be viewed in context.  So a fundamental question might be whether you want it to be a Verb which characterizes the action of using the magic, or a Noun that characterizes the user of the magic. For example: Are your people described as Using Lashings or Being Windrunners?  Or is it all just Awakeners doing Awakening?

 

That being said, here's a random suggestion.  Since your talking about the four scientific fundamental forces I went with more academic than mysticism:

Call the Magic force Impetus, call a generic user a Conatus, but with more colloquial names for people who use each one, possibly with a second set of names/titles for those that can use combinations, all very descriptive of their flavors of abilities.  Very Metallic arts in concept

Gravity = Attractors (slang: Pullers, Crushers, etc)

Electromagnetism = Oscillators (Slang: pulsers, zappers, Ringers, etc)

Weak and Strong = ??? (Depends on the sorts of visible abilities each will manifest)

 

 

Honestly, all of this. I remember Brandon saying somewhere (I think it was a Writing Excuses episode) that most of his in-universe magic system words came from combining two descriptor words, so that's also a good place to start- though my first thought was combining physics with magician to make "physician" so it might do to put more thought into it XD

[nofrodelius]

Physicis or Physicum Arcanus?

Edited August 7, 2019 by nofrodelius

[Xardan Ta'Caran he/him]

How about "Physardry?" A mix between Physics and Wizardry. 

But barring something like that, you could just not name your magic system. I've read quite a few books that I've VERY much enjoyed that don't actually name the magic, they only define it. Just some examples are Terry Goodkind's magic system (Additive and Subtractive magic) & L. E. Modesitt, Jr. (Order and Chaos). Not sure if that will work for you, but those are my first thoughts.

[bmcclure7]

This is best idea so far

[Kingsdaughter613 she/her]

On 10/27/2018 at 4:29 AM, Pagliacci said:

I'm developing a magic system that relates to the manipulation of the four fundamental forces of the universe/nature: gravity, electromagnetism, weak force and strong force.

I'm trying to come up with a name for this magic. Any suggestions?

Why not call it what it is? The Fundamental. It sounds powerful, and interesting, and also perfectly encapsulates what it is: the usage of the Fundamental Forces.

Magnetokinesis already exists for manipulating Magnetism. Gravitokinesis for Gravity. So you could probably use those as sub-terms.

I’d use nucleokinesis for the strong force and radiokinesis for the weak one.

Edited September 3, 2019 by Kingsdaughter613