1) Fences and Ladders
2) Don't Block Me Bro! (if developed in the past 5 years)
3) Snobby game #2 that only idiot-savants and layabouts can play well

The first comes from my elevator-pitch answer to "How do you play this?". Goes like this:

This is an empty field and we are both running fence to see who can get the most. The stones are the fenceposts and you fill in the fence when you get pushed. To keep it interesting (and not turn into "My side, your side") you can pull out the posts if you surround them yourself.

Kinda rural-based, but seems to get the idea across to most people quickly. Feel free to use at your leisure. Any talk of "eyes" or "living groups" comes later.

Bruce "From CA-LA-RA-DO" Young

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Currently reading: Plutarch, Cerebus, and D&Q 25th Anniversary

Stone Field

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I think therefor I have a headache.

361 Ronins

But "stone field" is a good one too

The Art of War

Wargames

Strategy vs Tactics

Balance

Combat

Capture

Battlestones

Grids / Squares / Intersections

I'm not sure, but we would definitely feel much differently about the customs of who takes what color...

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That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
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My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

I'm partial to "Stone Field" myself.

- Marty Lund

The Glass Bead Game

It should be called Wurple, then it would rhyme with purple.

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North Lecale

Landjepik. As fas as Westerners have a command of Dutch. The word means land lifting ( or stealing ) and it is the name of an almost forgotten dutch game. The game was very popular among Western countries during colonialism. The children's game was played by throwing pocket knifes into the ground, the direction in which they settled into the ground defined new borders between territories. The knifes came in handy for solving other disputes as well.

We played a game called "Länder mausen" (that is the same name), but with sticks. As this involved throwing them after other children I very much doubt this variant was played with knives anywhere else. Its popularity wasn't limited to colonial times either (I played it in the 80s and 90s). I wouldn't be surprised at all if it is still played although the entertainment industry is working hard to make children unable to play games without buying equipment. + It isn't worse than all those "postcolonial" conquest games children play on computers.

I like the agricultural theme of Baghwan. I somewhere read a text that compared the grid of the goban to field patterns in an irrigation agriculture.

As a linguist(tics major), this is the type of question i could spend way too much time thinking about. It occurs to me that what sets go apart from other games is there a bit of gentlemanliness about it (sorry to be male-centric) in that a refined player is not aiming for total domination, merely one more point than the other. Therefore I would lean towards names with that general idea, such as

half plus one
simple majority
one more

Of course,those all sound terribly boring, because in English, given the language's history, we have a passion for loan word appropriation to the extent that English words as names often sound mundane, so you would have to translate that into, say, swahili, where you come up with the following:

moja
wengi

In any event, anything would've been better than "go," which not only sounds pedestrian, but, as anyone looking through the android market place can attest, causes needless confusion.

In all serious tho, I think I like stone field or hegemon.

Or, in my case, die and let live.

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I would favor "go, the game of stone swords", shortening over time to "stone swords", and then "stones".

entropy

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If you say no, Elwood and I will come here for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day of the week.

Since somebody wrote something involving strategy and tactics …

- Stractics
- Tactegy

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

It's only "chess" in English. In many European languages, the name is much closer to the original. In German, for example, it is called "Schach", which is almost identical with the Persian name ("schah", king), and somewhat similar to the Arab version ("schatrandsch").

The original poster asked about western names, but so far the answers have been about European languages, such as English, German, Dutch. None of the western languages have really been considered.

So what would it be in Navajo, Penutian or Nahuatl?

Well, in Navajo, it'd be called "checkerboard," the white player would called "Bia" and komi would be the white player's "Dawes allotment." More seriously, the concept of hozro or hozho, not sure the spelling, would cover the balance aspects of the game very nicely, just not the part where one player wins by crunching the other.

The word you're looking for is "gentility".

Intriguingly, some ludologists believe that the people who crossed the Bering Straits brought proto-parcheesi with them. If they had brought 弈 with them as well, it would probably have a derivative name.