Word for magic users?

Jenkki

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Mage is a good generic term because it's gender neutral in English and doesn't overtly refer to any specific element or tradition that most people know about. However it does come from a genuine occult tradition, the Persian term magi, a Zoroastrian linkage, which is an interesting religion to look at. But most people don't know anything about Zoroastrianism so the term 'mage' works well as a neutral term in non-esoteric general fantasy works.

It's your story and world though, if you want to use witch, warlock, wizard, or mage, magi, magus, sorceror, sorceress, conjuror, or something else, and there are dozens of these words, it's your choice.
 

snafu1056

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For the record, I'm pretty sure "magi" was plural. The singular was "magus" I believe. Which also sounds plural. So its confusing. :Shrug:
 

PickleHeartsBooks

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to those of you making up your own terms/words, how are you coming up with them? Anything I try to come up with sounds stupid. I've been trying to use to google translate to just use certain words in different a language, and then change a letter or two, but they're all dumb. I don't know if I'm overthinking it, or if there is a better way to come up with a name
 

Beanie5

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Lakey

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"Warlock" is sometimes thought of as the male counterpart of a traditional witch but I'm not sure I've ever seen that borne out in fantasy. Where I've seen it it does tend to have more direct "dark magic" associations.

Warlock was used on Bewitched without any dark magic connotations - it was just the generic term that people with powers of witchcraft used for the males among them. Samantha was a witch; her father Maurice was a warlock; etc. Now, whether that counts as fantasy, I'm not equipped to say... though I did incorporate some characters from the show into a communal fantasy story when I was in college. Uh, did I just admit that out loud...?
 

themindstream

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Conjurer was the name that first came to my mind.

With some exceptions, conjurer in my experience tends to be associated with stage magicians...or it's a sub-discipline of magic. The literal definition of the word "conjure" is to create something out of apparently nothing.