I am not actually sure what you mean buy source to be in a position to name it. I think you may be referring to places where you set a relationship between items, the first that comes to mind is tiddler because Tiddlywiki is made of tiddlers, or rather than source you could say tiddlername. If however you are looking for something more universal, I would first look at what set the items belong to and then identify what you may call the parts.
First does the Zettelkasten not use “card” in its terminology? Perhaps info internally (a tiddler) is card and externally is link or source?
Here is a little auto-brainstorming
Examples of the Whole → parts
- Whole → parts
- Notebook → note
- Network → node
- Library → books
- Population → people/or persons/contact
- Group → member
- Set → item
Something to note is also the use of plural (many) and singular (one)
- Notes → note
- Ideas → idea
- Sets → set → item (in set)
- Items → item
However you could consider words that describe parts as well
- Piece(s)
- Part(s)
- Fragment(s)
- Items(s)
- Reference(s)
Keep in mind you can over generalise sometimes it is best to keep different names for a reference to something else because then it highlights the difference.
I think the use of source is to say “the source is where it came from” like the source of a river, or the source of a news article eg New York times, or a url address. I tend to call this a “link” to a source first then rename it to a more suitable name like “NYTimes article” so underlying this its is always a link.
By the way this is what a thesaurus (not a dinosaur) is good for, or search for “SYNONYM source” eg SOURCE Synonyms: 51 Synonyms & Antonyms for SOURCE | Thesaurus.com but other than “connection” I do not get much here. I do note however the word antecedent which introduces the idea that something comes before in time, so makes me think of
- Cause → event
- Previous > Next
I hope this inspires and answer, best of luck.
