Thanks for the info, though I think I would be guaranteeing confusion if I referred to a hoinky. Isn't that a white guy? (I know, the spelling is different.)

The idea is to avoid confusion by making it obvious what you mean. I think I'll try to switch to left caret and right caret, as mentioned, and up caret for what I called a caret above. The modifier expresses which way the caret points, pretty good! And if someone wants to refer to the letter v as a down caret, that's ok with me.