Hands Off Me Booty - Realism Over Simple Names?

...Stick with the simple names. Imagine writing rules for someone who knows very little about ships at all, but LOVES pirates. There's no need to "gum up the works" with official terminology.

There are games were it is awesome to bring a little bit of knowledge to the players. EX: In Le Havre "The Buttery" card. I had no idea what this card meant when I first opened the box, but it did make me feel good to learn a little something new.

I also feel pretty good when I am learning names of foreign places from boards, or maybe some unique cultural thing. Be careful though, because if pronouncing it is too hard, then people probably won't like it. The worst thing is saying something, thinking you are smart, and then someone says you are completely wrong.

Also, people probably wouldn't like it if they had to learn a whole lot of new words for the game. But one, two, or three are right on the money. Seriously, how cool did we all feel knowing what Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma were from D&D before anyone of the non-gamer kids knew?

Basically, if you can make it very easy to learn what the words mean, people would like that. But not if it was overly-complicated, or not intuitive.