The Pattern Language approach to code didn't have to turn into naming everything after patterns (and then arguing endlessly about the ones that are ambiguously differentiated). It could have just been a field guide to spotting them. I recall reading a few good papers about how 75% of that book is just idiomatic functional programming code. I am blissfully unaware of anyone in the FP space getting suckered into actually naming anything after the official names.
I attended a workshop a couple years back, run by a person who was 1 degree of separation away from the Gang Of Four and he asserted that book was a Masters or PhD thesis for the youngest author and the other people were essentially editors. This was all news to me. I suspect if I had known this I would have pushed back a lot sooner, instead of getting sucked in too. A decade of OOAD ruined by someone's college project...
GoF tells you What. ‘Refactoring’ tells you Why, and gives some pointers on How. In any field, if you know the why and the how of something, and the what doesn’t work itself out? Then you’re in the wrong field.
(He’s gotten promoted twice since we parted ways. He’ll be just fine.)
My team had a discussion about this and some argued that this might alienate programmers who are novices, and might be easier to use "Enlgish" but I think that if the problem space for your software is niche enough then a new team member, or a novice will have to learn terminology either way. In my opinion, programming terminologies are more precise and transferable to other programming jobs and problems in general, so is a more sustainable and relevant way of learning. It might be tough at first, and I agree the attitude of the senior dev would make a huge difference, but as long as the senior dev takes the initial confusion of the novice as a good teaching moment, and explains it patiently and clearly I think it can be more valuable in the long term.