If people could just remember that there are in fact several meanings for words, having to engage in that conversation down the road would not even happen. Or perhaps it would, but assuming reasonable people, it might amount to clarifying what the word (such as "master") means in a particular case or where it came from. As long as the usage of the word isn't particularly strongly associated with what is offensive, that conversation shouldn't be a huge problem.

If people start jumping on the bandwagon of renaming "master" (or any such term) en masse because of it being "potentially offensive", that makes people think the usage of the word is offensive, and the potential offensiveness and having to explain that it's not becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And then we'll all need to change what we call this or that, just because people can't remember that words have multiple meanings.

Let's not turn meanings that are not problems into ones that are.

This kind of thinking though leads inadvertently to doublespeak. You end up avoiding saying so much you can't say anything.

It’s not deep historical context. It’s a contemporary, widespread usage of master to refer to an original or an exemplar. In the rare case an adult doesn’t know this, they can catch up in seconds.

I don't think that's true. Then you would just be explaining to new team members why you are not using master. You can explain to someone who doesn't know in one sentence where the term comes from.

> easier to just rename it now than it would be to explain to someone a few months down the road the deep historical context for why this should not offend them

Do you have any examples of such conversations, specifically regarding to the naming of the "master" branch?

> it's a very small and relatively easy change to make to CREATE hiccups down the road.

Fixed that for you.