Names for groups and titles...

Stop overthinking. Just be consistent--don't have some made-up names and others obviously derived from real languages. Many many many Fantasy novels have horses, and everyone overlooks that they're Earth animals. So you can use Greek or Latin names with no difficulty, as far as I'm concerned. Other readers might be more purist.

Just as a hint make them easy to pronounce, no made up words that read like 'Nonfunqkzx' or at least employ some rules of rules of phonetics.
My WIP has a real name, Cian, which is pronounced Kie-an and I've had to employ an opportunity to explain the pronunciation for readers. You don't want to be doing this with every in world word.

Dagrami said:

My current WIP requires I create a lot of names for groups and various types of magic users, as I'm sure fantasy writers are well accustomed to. I've probably been thinking into this too much, but I can't decide what to base these names and titles on.

When reading fantasy or science fiction, do you prefer real-world based names, such as terms in Ancient Greek, Latin, or even more common words, such as Magician or Wizard etc?

Or, perhaps it's better to include new and made-up names - after all Ancient Greece never did exist in the fictional world the story is set in.

But then I always wonder, as a reader, is it not better to have words which perhaps have some grounding in the real world? That way, it won't all just be a load of random words with no real meaning for the reader to remember and understand.

Which do you prefer as a reader? And which do you use in your own writing?

Oh, and please feel free to tell me to stop overthinking it!

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I much prefer original and common English words. When I see Greek or Latin words/phrases in fantasy books, I automatically assume "Alternate History". Not sure if that's just a me thing, but that's just where my mind goes. The only exception to this seems to be Necromancer, since that is very heavily established with fantasy.

You don't always have to make up a random word, but you can get pretty original combining/tweaking known English words: Magecraft, Stormcaller, Firewalker, Elementalist, Windmaster, Lightbringer, etc.

Of course it all depends on how your magic system works, and exactly how many variations of magic casters you have. Robert Jordan has many variations of magic users, and while "Aes Sedai" is an original term, he makes the concept easier to understand by breaking them into sects/circles simply by using colors. And he unifies his unique terms by referring to the act/use of magic by a common word "weaving" and "channeling". Easy words for readers to comprehend.

He also uses words we are familiar with to refer to magic casters of other cultures (ie: Wise Ones, Windfinders, The Kin, etc).

Anyhow, perhaps you should try letting the names invent themselves? Often times, as with in real life, things/groups end up taking names on their own. Most of the time (unless it's a VERY specific and central group), I use placeholder names, and while I'm writing, something will come up naturally.

Lot of it depends on the culture and how they view the world. In one of my books there is a culture that calls their magic users "The Scarn". They really are no different than the typical mage in my world, with the exception this culture views it as evil, and they are marked on the forehead and cast out: thus their name. They refer to outsider magic casters as "Unmarked Ones", and fear them a great deal.

I say just let the name happen. I didn't come up with "The Scarn" until I started writing the chapter this culture first appeared in.

Names for people and things are hard for me. In my WIP I'm falling back on a mangled Portuguese. But in the text I have lots of [village name] to deal with on later drafts.

Grunkins said:

Names for people and things are hard for me. In my WIP I'm falling back on a mangled Portuguese. But in the text I have lots of [village name] to deal with on later drafts.

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I know the feeling. I'm currently up to 341 city/village/city/area names and profiles in my "Places" database.