In Simon R. Green's world, there were water mages and mist mages. That always stuck with me because I liked the idea that someone could be specialized in a specific form of an element (or reaction) while others were more generic.
That lead into the “original” system (Crystal Spheres Techniques) not making a distinction but then someone inventing something that attempted to create a new system that did.
We've seen this in our world when Carl Linnaeus came up with his taxonomy with genus and species.
Naturally, I decided to go with the faux-Latin of my world, Lojban which has a more relaxed variant in Fedran called Lorban (and the source of most of my naming).
I haven't delved too far into the Towler Classification, but the basic ideas are there:
- frati: All reactionals
- frati fagri: Fire magic, including heat and flame
- frati fagri fagri: Heat-less flame
- frati fagri glanejni: Magic that produces heat without flames
- rakle: All elementals
- rakle djacu: Water
- rakle djacu bumru: Mist