Names carry power!

Nickname: Wonderful, totally respectable appellomancers who aren’t called anything else.

http://oglaf.com/branding/ (link NSFW)

Generate a minor charge: Give something an official name. This must be something that requires a recorded name of some kind. This can include, for instance, a pet (if registered with a vet), a new business, or a boat. Things that don’t normally have an official recorded name (such as cars and pencils) don’t count. You must have the authority to make the change. Alternately, if you can convince or coerce someone else to use a name that you picked, that counts. Online login names, character names, and nicknames don’t count.

Generate a significant charge: Give a human a name. This can be by marriage, parentage, or legal name change. You must have the authority to make the change. Alternately, if you convince or coerce someone else to give a person a name that you picked, that counts. You can’t get a significant charge from changing your own name.

Generate a major charge: Give a name to a nation, or to a school of magic. For a nation, you must have the authority to do so, or convince or coerce others to use a name that you picked. For a school of magic, the name you pick must become the standard accepted description used in the Occult Underground for the school.

Taboo: Allow insult to your name. If someone insults you in your presence, gets your name wrong, you must punish them. If someone spreads rumors about you by name, you must address the rumors and punish the rumor-starter. If a day (24 hours) passes after you find out about an insult to your name and you haven’t punished the perpetrator (no matter how long ago the insult actually happened), you instantly lose all charges. (You can regain them as normal afterward.)

If anyone insults Appellomancy or Appellomancers as a whole and goes unpunished for 24 hours, ever Appellomancer everywhere loses all charges. Fortunately, the Appellomancers have the Pull Your Shift formula to prevent this. Appellomancers expect each other to have this formula ready at all times.

Symbolic Tensions: When you change the name of a thing, it simultaneously does and does not change the thing itself.

Random Magic Domain: Naming. Appellomancers change names of things, and by doing so, change those things. They control the universe by controlling the names of things in the universe. This is similar to Anagram Gematria, but has a very different flow of operation.

Starting Charges: 4 minor charges.

Charging Tips: You can get minor charges with a few day’s work, or faster if you take an appropriate job. Significant charges generally require work, unless you’re in a fortunate position — Appellomancers crave the power they can gain from working in an orphanage.

Minor Formula

Name That Goon
1 minor charge
For the next hour, you instantly know the current legal name of anyone you see. If they don’t have a legal name, you’ll know that, and know their common name. If they’re an Appellomancer, you sense that, too, and you can sense whether they have a Pull Your Shift spell active.

Rename
4 minor charges
You give someone a new name permanently. All legal records will change to that name, and the target cannot claim any other name or they will make a rank-8 Self check. The target will know that they have been renamed, but they still feel like the new name is their actual name. This is permanent.

Really Rename
7 minor charges
As Rename, with an additional effect: The target and others will perceive the target as having any attributes described in the name. This can give a +20% or -20% shift to appropriate skills. If you name someone Doctor Smooth, they might have a +20% to seduction, and if you name them Joe Redhead, other people really will see them as having red hair.

Significant Formulas

Pull Your Shift
1 significant charge
The next time that someone insults Appellomancy or Appellomancers, you will immediately teleport to their location, and after you have punished them, you’ll teleport back to where you were. You will also hear the exact insulting words spoken, and know who spoke them.

Generally, though, every Appellomancer out there has this spell ready, and an insult only pulls one Appellomancer: the one who cast the earliest untriggered spell. Basically, it puts your spell in the queue in order. Each Appellomancer can only have one spell in the queue, and if an Appellomancer fails to punish the victim within 24 hours, then the spell fails.

Really Really Rename
2 significant charges
As Really Rename, with a much bigger effect: The target must behave in accordance with their new name, and others will generally go along with it. So, for instance, if you name someone Sir Shot-by-Cops, police will feel an urge to shoot them on sight.