what do you call the ".." in regards to directory paths?
I personally call it "dot dot", "up one", and "parent directory" in conversation. Once or twice I called it ellipses and my friends slapped me across the face and took my beer away. They were right to punish me.
I usually just use the terms current and parent directory, or use "dot" and "dot dot" if I'm giving someone verbal instructions (eg. spelling out a bash command.)
Most technical documentation I've seen refers to them explicitly with "." and ".." (sometimes using single quotation marks.)
For example, kernel.org on path resolution:
By convention, every directory has the entries "." and "..", which refer tothe directory itself and to its parent directory, respectively.The path resolution process will assume that these entries have theirconventional meanings, regardless of whether they are actually present in thephysical file system.
I don't think there is any special name for that. I personally call it Parent Directory.