Try a bunch of queries; read good-looking papers, not for their results, but their discussion of background information. There's no real good solution to the problem of known unknowns: "I'm sure this has been researched, but what's the exact phrase or name it's been given in academia?" I suspect this is one of the benefits of being in the community - when you discuss something or mention an idea, they can say 'ah yes, X' and now you have the much much easier problem of a unknown known which you can just punch into Google Scholar and get to work.