Image you know how to play Go but there is not yet a name for this wounderful game. You would have to give it a name.

What would that be???

Here's my take:

Surround & Conquer

(I realize that there are probably already a bunch of games with this name. But as we are talking about the oldest of all, this is kind of irrelevant.)

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Stay out of my territory! (W. White, aka Heisenberg)

Actually, considering the game has different names in the three countries where it is the most popular I'd like to re-propose a composite name: Weigoduk.

Tic-Tac-Thumb?
180 Men's Morris?
Grids? (vs. checkers)
Chess?

Probably it would have a name that doesn't mean much any more.

"Territorial Pursuit"

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be immersed

Assuming the same age and just placing the origin in the West, "Stones" would be my guess. Or possibly WMS's suggestion of "Grids", but my guess would be that naming would concentrate on the pieces instead of the board. That's assuming you'd still call the pieces "stones". If it were really western it would probably be wooden pieces and we'd call it "Pawns" or something like that. Or, if coming from a Greek tradition (which is probably the most likely if we look for a time and culture that would really appreciate Go, but that would make its origin more like 500 BC), maybe "Phalanx". Or, changing the metaphor to a more city/state centered one instead of warfare directly, maybe "Walls".

Actually "Walls" probably makes the most sense. The (a) goal of the game is to build a structure that can defend the most open space, which would resonate pretty well with ancient Greek thinkers and their constant warfare with neighboring cities, and literary traditions like the seige of Troy and the long walls, combined with their love of pure geometry.

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1k KGS

Author Robert Jordan actually did rename go just "stones" in his fantasy world (it took me years after reading some of his books to realise this).

Personally, I'd name it 'surrounding chess', to avoid making it sound brand-name-y. Yeah, not the most original . Maybe stones is good.

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Revisiting Go - Study Journal
My Programming Blog - About the evolution of my go bot.

Followup because I'm a nerd:

Τείχη (pronounced "Teehee" or "Teechee" more or less)

So for English speakers it'd be some weird round trip through Greek and Arabic probably (presumably Alexander the great would bring it to the Arab world and from there to the West during the Crusades (it could come through Rome but Rome wasn't ever much for cerebral... anything ) before finally making it to English.

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1k KGS

"Othello"

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KGS: schultz [?].

Clack
Menace à la terre
Ellbogen
Blackpool
Jeux d'Alsace
Fortellini
lõug

zusammenbauentabellespiel

Sorry. Zusammenbauentabellespiel

Tavolone

War.

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And the go-fever which is more real than many doctors’ diseases, waked and raged...
- Rudyard Kipling, "The Light That Failed" (1891)

"Point Control".

This makes most sense to me as the goal of the game is to control more points than the opponent.

Live and let die.

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Patience, grasshopper.

-Ponds
-Continental Drift
-What Cavemen Played
-Lines & Circles
-The Gentleman's War

Eh, those are just some that come to mind.

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Slava Ukraini!

Hegemon?
Imperio?
Murder?
Bully?

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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?

Risk

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

Not looking at the question correctly?

My answer is that if the game had developed in the West its name and terms (today) would be some corruption of the name of the game and terms used in the language of the people who developed the game. If 3000 years ago, even in the West that might not even be a language of the Indo-European language group as just arriving in Europe about then. Was it an Etruscan game? A Basque game? A gane of a people whose language we now know of only be the preservation of a few words that were terms of this game?

Why would you think the situation would be different than for chess? We call the game "chess" and not "kings" (and here we are still within the same language family). We say "checkmate" not "the king is dead". We still call the piece at the corners of the back row a "rook" ("rukh").