>>271928
Well I don't think there's necessarily much significance to AD&D changing the name to "Fighter", they presumably just thought it was a better term. Note "fighting man" is a real-life term used to mean a combatant in a war. That's why there's books with names like "The Fighting Men of the Civil War". The term probably also saw use in wargaming. And it shows up in fantasy fiction, like this chapter header poem in a Conan story:
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0600811h.html
>When I was a fighting-man, the kettle-drums they beat;
>The people scattered gold-dust before my horse's feet;
>But now I am a great king, the people hound my track
>With poison in my wine-cup, and daggers at my back.
Searching Chainmail, while it's not used for the name of a "Class", the term is used on page 8 in the traditional sense, as an umbrella term for anyone fighting. While as a wargame Chainmail had units like "Pikemen" and "Longbowmen" and "Heavy Horse", for D&D those were all represented by the single class "Fighting Man". Meanwhile roles which required distinctive mechanics or specialization like Magic-User or (introduced later) Thief, got separate classes from Fighting Men even though they are also combatants and thus technically fighting-men in the original sense.