It's BEEN "DPS" for decades, stop trying to change it to DD.

I've noticed an influx of people on Elysium/Nost calling for "DD" with multiple responses just asking what that even means. It of course means "Damage Dealer" but it's an abbreviation that's not needed or even widely used (my first thought when reading it was "Designated Driver"). If you use this abbreviation in an attempt to ask clearly and concisely for damage in your party, you just end up confusing 90% of the people reading your message and thus nullify the point of using a (as I've seen described) less nonsensical term. "DPS" has an established meaning, not as many misinterpretations possible without trying, and serves its function.

The reason for my accusatory title, by the by, is because the earliest mention of "DD" in relation to this topic is from 2012, a forum post suggesting it's stupid to refer to classes as "damage per seconders" and suggesting DD as an alternative. The second earliest 2 years later (followed by MANY threads on different forums around the same time frame) is "why do people keep calling DD by DPS????" Which is the same message but of a tone as if it's ALWAYS been DD instead of DPS. This reads to me as a small group of people (comparatively) trying to change the rpg lexicon just because they think their abbreviation is better. (I don't think it's a conspiracy or some crazy nonsense, just a buncha newcomers to rpgs being newcomers)

Edit: To add on to this, further research indicates (crawling through ancient forum posts and class guides for mmos I've never even heard of) DPS has been used as a term for a ROLE in MMOS specifically at least as far back as early EQ (I've found a few old posts from late 2000). The germanic origin is questionable as even the european forums I've pulled up don't even know why people started using it, granted said posts were either in english or machine translated. This term is either undeniably NEW and people are pushing it for no reason other than fake street cred(that's the only purpose I can think of) or exclusively used on specific servers for old MMOs and people from said servers just assumed everyone else talked like that. I have pulled up absolutely 0 evidence to the contrary.

Edit2: u/Silvere01 has stated that it is indeed widely used by Germans, so that ends that. Germans are the ones who are using it. Because I see no other European forum posts claiming any other country of origin, I have to assume it is specifically a German thing.

Final Edit(because it's pretty clear at this point that it's a minority of people using this term that just don't understand why it's an inferior term to DPS): u/ZombieDohnJoe Has provided evidence of DD actually being used in the same context in MMOs of yore, Anarchy Online, Fiesta Online, AND WoW. However only the first two examples EXCLUSIVELY used "DD" the WoW example waffles back and forth between referring to the role as "DD" and "DPS". After looking for a few hours for widespread usage, and coming up dry. Then to be shown these examples of widespread usage in specific communities alone and mixed usage in a large community, to have multiple English-secondary speakers(not that not speaking english or having it as your SECOND language is a bad thing), it reaffirms that this is NOT a common term outside those communities.

As a metaphor: It's like you guys grew up saying "Bread Burner" instead of "Toaster". Yeah, they're similar phrases that can be inferred to mean the same thing, but at the end of the day damn near everybody calls it a Toaster and your terminology for it is pretty confusing for those who have NEVER heard it.