Your lineage's wording is the right wording. A chart that only offers someone else's names for a pattern makes you either settle for a near match or type it into a notes box where nothing else can find it.
Type it while you chart
The filter above the Pattern chips, the Pulse chips and the Technique modality chips all work the same way. Type a term that isn't there and the last option becomes + Add followed by what you typed. Click it, or arrow down to it and press Enter, and the term is switched on for this session and added to your practice's list in the same step. The next chart, yours or anyone else's in the practice, offers it as an ordinary chip. Typing a term that is already in the list, in any capitalization, just selects the existing one. Tongue color, coating and shape behave the same way, and so does building a protocol.
Six lists you can tidy up
Under Settings → Charting → Clinical vocab, each list has its own collapsed section showing how many options it holds: Pattern, Pulse quality, Tongue body color, Tongue coating, Tongue shape and Technique modality. Open one to edit it. Change a term by editing its text, move it with the up and down arrows, remove it with Remove, or press + Add option for a new one. Changes save as you make them.
Reset to defaults brings back the starting list for that one category, after a confirmation. It never touches anything already charted. Order is for the Settings list: on a chart, the chips are always shown alphabetically.
Renaming and removing, with charts in mind
Renaming a term nobody has charted yet just happens. If sessions already use it, Goji asks first, telling you how many: Update all rewrites those sessions to the new wording, and Just relabel new entries changes the list only and leaves old sessions as they were. Pulse qualities recorded by position are updated too.
Removing a term only stops it being offered. If sessions use it, you are asked to confirm, and they keep it exactly as charted.
Who it applies to
The lists belong to the practice, so a change applies to every session and every practitioner in it. Any member of the practice can add terms while charting or edit the lists in Settings; there is no separate permission for it. Points have no list to edit, since they follow standard nomenclature (see the point picker), and a chart can drop a section like tongue altogether with chart templates.