While the use of etymology in the discussion is smoke screen, you can't use Terran Etymolgy for Glorantha, thats like using etymology on a translation to try to draw conclusions about the source culture.
Other than that, Philip was right. Familiar and Allied spirit are close enough to be identical. The historical familiar spirit was provided by the 'Dark Powers' to aid and insure the damnation of the disciple. RQ game terminology provides the a contextual difference. Personally a loath the RQ familiar and do not use it as such.
By the way, if you are an English speaker you are more likely to have different words for the same thing than many other languages. This is less due to meaning differences than source language differences. There is a hill in england whose name is hill hill hill if you translate all its elements into modern english.
Allen
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