"Wizard" or "Sorcerer" or "Mage"?

[Li Shenron]

The players almost always refer to their characters by the class names. OTOH when I DM I usually use alternative names, whatever comes to my mind, and sometimes I have used a "wrong" class name on purpose to confuse the players, such as talking about the evil Wizard when he's a Sorcerer or vice versa...

 

[kigmatzomat]

IMC the arcane casters are referred to as "mages" by the general populace and only those with experience or specific knowledge recognize the sorceror/wizard divide.

Priest is the typical title for a cleric but it applies to adepts, druids and sometimes paladins and rangers. Villages in close proximity to a druidic grove will often know to differentiate between druids and clerics but a druid/fighter and a ranger will still throw most of them for a tizzy.

After that it turns into their general profession with a bit of the PrCs thrown in. Warrior, guard, scout, bodyguard, woodsman all get used. IMC there's a lot of knight variants, being distantly based on DL so there are paladins who aren't knights and knights that aren't paladins.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

I still call 'em magic users.

 

[Gez]

The technical term for all arcane spellcasters is 'arcanist' or (for the really powerful or knowledgeable) 'Arcanadian'.

Does practice of arcane magic makes one's eyes beady and one's head floppy?

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

In my current campaign, all of the PCs are Black Sheep Knights. They may have had other titles before, but chances are those titles weren't their class titles. Not only do the PCs not use their class titles, they've never heard a good many of them (shou disciple, dervish) or would be deeply offended to hear them (barbarian, rogue).

Between them and NPCs they've met, "Black Sheep Knight" applies to:

A swashbuckler/ninja/shou disciple/dervish
A warmain/barbarian
A samurai/ranger (urban variant)/soldier
A ranger (urban variant)
A ranger/rogue (looking at scout)
A monk/acolyte
A rogue
A rogue/mage/arcane trickster
A marshal

The last campaign I ran did use some spellcasting class names (wizard and magister), but not others (sorcerer was "dragon-blooded").

 

[Gez]

For a more serious contribution, there are no mass-accepted "pop-culture" names for any single class.

An arcanist (the proper technical term for all arcane spellcasters) can be called anything, from mage to witch.

A cleric may be called a priest, a chosen one, a miracle worker, a lunatic (gods living on the moon...), a godslave...

A fighter may be called a warrior, soldier, a man-at-arm, a brawler, a brute...

A rogue may be called a sneak, a scoundrel, a thief, a spy...

Also, there are several classes, some of them staying in the boundaries. A mageblade (from AU) could be considered an arcanist or a warrior.

Thanks to a few houserules, though, both wizards and epigones (sorcerer replacement) slowly turns themselves into something else, the power of arcane magic rewriting them into something new. So, they could be called the freaks. Only problem, the really freaky ones are the most powerful...

The only class name that is accepted and recognized widely is "paladin." (Although clerics of a LG deity may be considered paladins too.)