Magic: the Gathering question

if iam not mistaken its the title of a movie from 2003 and a mini serie from 2007 but you might want to check imdb to be sure...

Gathering would mean for a group of people to assemble (or gather) to do something. In this case, to play the card game. When they were coming up with a name for their game Magic was too broad and couldn't be copyrighted so they needed to add to the name. Magic started as a card game and people would have to gather to play it. You cannot play it alone with cards. And thus the name was expanded to Magic the Gathering.

Magic alone was not enough for a Trademark, so they added The Gathering.
A gathering is a meeting or coming together of people or elelements, objects, animals, you name it.

edit : what that guy said ^

Now really, what is wrong with checking a dictionary or Wikipedia (there is an Italian page too)?

Gathering as an action means to collect people/things/creatures in a single place. "A gathering" (or the gathering in this case) is essentially a group of people/things/whatever.

So my guess would be this is a group of magic users gathered in one area to do battle. No idea if that's the idea behind the name or not though.

EDIT: The copyright answer makes sense as to why they chose to append "the Gathering"

Ok so I assume this gathering is about people (besides trademark/copyright stuff).
Since it's a trading card game, I was sure "gathering" meant "collecting" the cards... I was kind of shocked when I read "Magic: l'Adunanza" (adunanza means a gathering of people, a meeting, an assembly).