Sometimes I worry about terminology in my fantasy being too cheesy or precious. I think we’ve all heard the jokes about capitalization in fantasy, something I tend to avoid. I usually prefer to treat magic as just another part of life in the worlds I create, but it can be hard to convey that when most of the words we have for it are meant to express something, well, magical.
My current project caused some trouble for me because it’s a magic system where each person develops a magical power that’s somehow a natural extension of some aspect of their identity. I wasn’t sure what to call these powers. I had originally landed on “gifts” with the society viewing them as something the gods had endowed them with. I wasn’t quite happy with the general feel of this. Though I did glance at Diana Wynne Jones’s The Tough Guide to Fantasyland to see what the view of the term was there and it wasn’t too bad:
“GIFTS is another word for TALENTS. It is used by people who feel reverent about MAGIC.”
That actually did fit what I wanted in terms of the religious view in the world I’m making, but something about it was still bothering me. I just had a hard time imagining all different people with different attitudes using it.
Then I decided that this society was going through a sort of Enlightenment period. People are beginning to question the dominant religion and many of them are changing to more neutral terminology like “ability”. So people still use the term “gift” but now it says something about them and their beliefs. Or not. In my main character’s case, she’s not particularly religious but she sticks with the traditional term out of convenience—usually avoiding arguments with more religious relatives—and because it’s just the term most people grow up using, the same way atheists in our world often still say “oh my god”.
I think I’m satisfied with it now.