User blog comment:BlueBarracudaMary/Protagonist, Deuteragonist, Tritagonist, Tetartagonist, Pentagonist, What Comes Next?/@comment-961279-20190626042015

The misuse of words like this has died down over the past few months or years, but I stand by my earlier statements that any character below a tertiary level is so minor that they really aren't important enough to give them a specific ranking. Even the tertiary level is borderline as to not being very important.

Words like this are interesting on a theoretical level, but on a practical level they are kind of pointless. Even if you define the characters on a 21-level scale like what was given for Total Drama a year ago, someone else will come up with a slightly different order for the characters because it's subjective.

You also don't see those kinds of rankings when talking about things like your friends. When you're introducing your friends to someone you just met, do you line them up and introduce them like this: "This is Shelley. She's my best friend. Here's Brad, my second-best friend. Then we have Charlie, my third-best friend and Charlene, my fourth-best friend. Over there is Sally, my fifth-best friend," and so on. Or, using these suggestions, do you introduce them as your primary friend, secondary friend, tertiary friend, tetartary friend, pentary friend, hexagonary friend, heptagonary friend, and so on?

It's about as effective as measuring everyone's height in millimeters. Someone who is 1830 mm tall is taller than a person who stands six feet zero inches tall, but given that six feet is 1828.8 millimeters, is an extra 1.2 mm really important enough to define it that way?

Keep it simple. Main character(s), secondary character(s) and minor character(s). There's no need to go any further.

If you aren't spending time trying to invent words so you can line up characters side by side and give them a rigidly-defined ranking of exactly how important they are in the story, you avoid others trying to change it to a slightly different rigidly-defined ranking and everyone can spend more time enjoying the story and seeing what makes the character a  person  instead of a label.