My Thoughts
- Lists is a terrible name. As @owlyph pointed out people just think of bullet point lists/views.
- Collections is a more friendly (less technical) way of saying databases. It may not be 100% immediately obvious what it is, but it’s also not misleading (like lists would be). If you’re wanting to be different from Notion I’d pick this.
- Queries is also a terrible name. A query indicates that you’re searching for data, not creating data.
- Sets, not terrible, but collections is just better.
- Databases is the most clear (after tables). This is the terminology that Notion uses and therefore it would be easy for people migrating from notion (and other applications) to understand. If you’re wanting to more directly be a notion alternative use this name.
- Bases is really just a shorthand form of databases. Imo it’s kinda silly and just an attempt to say “database” while being different. It would be better to just use database instead.
- Catalogs. I personally don’t like it. Makes me think of those thick store magazines. I might be showing my age here tho.
- Tables is the most technically accurate and clear. So if you’re going for pure accuracy you would want to pick this one.
I think my vote would be collections then databases. It really depends on how similar to Notion you want to be. From what I’ve seen you’re wanting to be a Notion competitor, but not a Notion clone. So I vote collections.