Wizards of the Coast just recently changed the name of a Magic: The Gathering plane and for a very important reason.
Ever since Magic Origins in 2015, the plane of Avishkar (then Kaladesh) has been a constant presence in Magic. Lightly taking India as an inspiration, Avishkar, either it's plane or people, has been seen in many an expansion, including 2016's Kaladesh.
Kaladesh should sound familiar because, until earlier this year, that's what the plane was called. In-universe, there was actually a pretty neat reason for the name change. A political name change in Kaladesh resulted in the people wanting a plane name change, and thus, Avishkar.
However, in real life, there was another reason for a name change.
With Aetherdrift coming up in early 2025, and Kaladesh being one of the planes returning in the set, Wizards of the Coast decided to work with consultants and language experts familiar with Indian culture. And it was going great. That is until they found out what kala means in some of the languages there.
We'll let Magic explain the awkward situation:
"Here's what our consultants said. When we created the original Kaladesh set, we chose the word "kala-" (kalā, kah-LAH) as a word that can mean "tomorrow" or "art," combined with "-desh," meaning "home" or "country." Unfortunately, the term "kala" (kālā, KAH-lah) can also be associated with the meaning "black," and often carries derogatory colorist and racist connotations when applied to a person.
"We didn't want that connotation to hang over this plane each time we visited it. Instead, we decided to take Aetherdrift as our opportunity to implement a new name."
Now, WotC has changed things before or outright banned cards that had not so great foreign translations. It's happened with Maori before, as well as Arabic.
But this time around they had to change an entire plane's name. That has never been done before. So, in addition to making an in-universe change, they wanted to make the name go from, er, bad, to one that meant something good and still sounded pretty neat. And so...
"We generated a host of possible names for the plane and reviewed them with the same group of consultants. We discussed the pros and cons of each of the candidate names and worked through their pronunciations, meanings, and connotations. Together, we selected Avishkar, from the Hindi word "aavishkar" meaning "invention." The consultants vetted the name and its spelling, and the decision was made."
The term Kaladesh itself will still be grandfathered in on cards, expansion names, and past references. But, just like the name change being for good, so will be the history of it. Something bad ultimately got a change for good.
So Avishkar? Sometimes change is good.
