Acataleptically Meretricious Gearwarden of Marjfloop

Hoo boy. Magic is currently sitting at over 16 000 unique cards, and let me tell you... lately it really shows. How's that, you ask? Just look at the newest set, Kaladesh, and tell me they aren't scraping the absolute bottom of the barrel with card names nowadays. Effective, punchy, single-word names are in short supply after twenty-three years of printings, and we're left with entire sentences, the most tenuous synonyms left for "fiery" and made-up fantasy words that would make even George Lucas wince. Every set has had its weak names, all the way back to Alpha with Bad Moon and Dingus Egg. Except nowadays... it feels like every card has its weak names.



Digging Too Deep

At the end of the day, Magic cards are just variations on a lot of the same concepts: a counterspell, removal, creature theft, a life gain spell, and so on. Each little pool of possibilities requires a name for each member, and ideally each name is fitting, meaningful and sounds pleasant to the ear. However, for some of these concepts - counterspells and burn in particular, it seems to me - the pool is running perilously shallow, and potential card names are getting more and more tenuous. We don't have Disintegration, we have Unlicensed Disintegration. Seriously. "Destroy target creature in a way that's not allowed." We don't Rebuff spells, we label them with a Revolutionary Rebuff. Confiscate has evolved into "Confiscation Coup." This here dromedary, both in name and image, is significant only because we literally tied a bunch of stuff to it. Weaponcraft Enthusiast is incredibly not a jokey goblin card, since Deft Duelist, Fencing Ace and the like were all already taken. Seriously, the word "enthusiast" should probably never appear in a Magic card name.
Worst Offender: Unlicensed Disintegration

Trying too hard

I'll admit that this category is awfully similar to "Generally Silly," but it's more specifically for cards that the designers obviously put in a great deal of effort to make a good fantasy name for - too much effort, in fact, resulting in a name that falls flat in that particular and fantastic way. What exactly is an "eternities crafter"? How does it differ from an eternity crafter? Only Rashmi knows for sure. How can a government mandate a consul for something as tenuous as innovation? By the looks of Padeem, selectively putting spray-tan on only part of your body is the newest innovation.

Why "Maulfist Doorbuster"? Why not just "Doorbuster"? Why "Weldfast Wingsmith" and not just "Wingsmith"? The cards simply overshot in their designers' misguided need to staple adjectives to everything. These two examples given, as well as many others, also fall prey to a very common fantasy standby: the compound word. Need a word that's hammer-over-the-skull evocative but still made-up? Just staple any two words together! "Arborback" isn't a word, but you know exactly what it means. It just crams "arbor" and "back" together. Sounds kind of fantastical, though, doesn't it? What about Highspire? Skysovereign? Heck, Maulfist Doorbuster and Weldfast Wingsmith both have names that are nothing more than two contrived compound words.
Worst Offender: Padeem, Consul of Innovation

Too Fantasy Novel

There's really no clever way to talk around this one or point out easy alternatives. There's just an abundance of goofy made-up words running through the style guide. "Narnam"? "Janjeet"? "Bomat"? What the Hell? Apparently Wizards has started getting its fantasy names from whatever noises Shriners make when you electrocute them.
By all means, made-up places should have made-up names, but they should be effective and evocative words: Yavimaya. Bogardan. Urborg. Argoth. Each word rolls off the tongue, sounds mystical and powerful in that unique High Fantasy way, and - perhaps I'm biased by years of exposure to the source material inevitably associating them, but nonetheless - evocative of the environments they're attached to. Instead we're left with the cutting room floor scraps from The Phantom Menace.
Worst Offender: Dhund Operative

Too Wordy

1994: Festival. 1998: Festival of Trokin. 2005: Festival of the Guildpact. 2016: Commencement of Festivities. If that's not a slow decline, I don't know what is. Frazzled Editor would be broken were it legal in Kaladesh.

Yes, I understand that one-word names are a precious resource and in short supply as time marches on. Effective two-word names may even be starting to teeter, but there's no reason why one needs to lay out a whole novella for something as simple as Slightly Different Disenchant #473. Kaladesh's offerings have more syllables than a stuttering auctioneer. Captured by the Consulate couldn't be "Consulate's Detainment"? Appetite for the Unnatural couldn't be "Unnatural Appetite"? Oviya Pashiri, Sage Lifecrafter couldn't be a Yu-gi-oh card? The legendary creatures in the set (and the puzzleknots) are especially bad offenders, inflating their job titles worse than you'll ever see outside of custodial work. Kambal, nevermind the fact he's just the antagonist from The Princess and the Frog, probably needs to start allocating more syllables and quit hogging them all for himself. Even his flavour text struggles to claim he has any friends, putting the word in quotation marks.
Worst Offender: Oviya Pashiri, Sage Lifecrafter

Real-World References

This is another case of overexposure. I'm fine with slipping some real-world sayings or concepts into card names every now and then. Mortal Combat was a pretty great moment for everyone when it was played straight. Heck, every split card is purposefully an established "X & Y" dichotomy, which I appreciate. Midnight Oil is a neat name, and I kind of like the subverted concept of Key to the City, but did we really need nine instances of common vernacular in a single set, all complete with wink-wink-nudge-nudge? Never mind the flavour confusions that a nonartifact creature can be Built to Last or that an artifact creature can Die Young, I just want to make it through a draft round without having the flabby guy across from me stare into my soul and belch out the words "I play Larger Than Life."
Worst Offender: Start Your Engines

Generally Silly

These cards are the hardest to pin down and yet perhaps stand out the most. There's no way to describe why they're badly named past the simple fact that their names are just plain bad. Remarkably, a great many of these cards are red, giving blue a break from the usual, dubious honour of having the most clumsy card names. Perhaps they're trying to get around re-using every synonym for fiery for the umpteenth time, and finding that red's really painted itself into a corner. Salivating Gremlins? Cathartic Reunion? Spontaneous Artist? None of these can be said with a straight face. It's bad enough that Banksy's girlfriend gets her own Magic card, but why did she need an Eberron-level fantasy-equivalent for spraypaint, and why is she as strong as a Hill Giant? I get that Built to Smash is named so as to have a one-two dichotomy with Built to Last, but the difference here it that "Built to Smash" is kind of nonsense that nobody ever says. Combustible Gearhulk is a real mystery, since the people naming it seem unaware that 'combustible' means 'able to catch fire and burn easily.' Is that seriously what they were trying to communicate - not that it lights things on fire, but if you happen to bring it too close to a candleflame, it goes up? Why not "Incendiary Gearhulk" or "Fiery Gearhulk" or... okay, I see. We're right back at re-using words for "fire." But such is red's lot in life.
Worst Offender: Revoke Privileges.