This discussion reminds me of the "Bag of zahav" experiment of Chapter 6.

My original guess at why names are needed for magic was that the Source of Magic uses the names as pointers to the information in other people's heads.

"It can understand nouns, but not noun phrases that mean the same thing? The person who made this probably didn't speak Japanese and I don't speak any Hebrew, so it's not using their knowledge, and it's not using my knowledge -"

It's using everyone else's knowledge. This would explain why wizards can transfigure things which have been discovered but not created, like CNTs, but can't transfigure Alzheimer's cures. Sadly, this possibility would be undermined by 'Tom Riddle' appearing on the map, since almost everyone knows him as Voldemort.