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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nathaniel Lee" data-source="post: 7757209" data-attributes="member: 6948827">Not exactly. Just the fact that the word has been part of the English language for well over a century and associated with classic literary tales of knights and warriors such as Arthur and Charlemagne gives it a huge leg up over a word whose use is essentially restricted to a single, non-Western country with absolutely no cultural significance.I get where you're coming from with this, but even if we were to start from a point where neither specific word has yet entered pop culture -- or culture in general -- "paladin" would still face an easier path to adoption considering its synonymic relationship with a word like "knight". The possible contexts in which the terms could even come up in conversation are so unbalanced in favor of "paladin" over "mahout" that it isn't even a fair fight. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />I'd prefer a single word as well if that single word could effectively convey an entire meaning, but in my career as a programmer, especially now working on projects with teams of dozens of other developers, I've learned that brevity !== simplicity.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />I ultimately view the best term -- single word, compound word or phrase -- that most effectively communicates the idea with the least amount of cognitive effort required.Heck, if we were just inventing Dungeons & Dragons right now, and our choice in naming of the primary martial class was between "paladin" and "dude who fights so good" I'd probably be inclined to choose the latter. And I'm only half-joking. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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