Tristan Needham’s word is “amplitwist”, meaning a scaling composed with a planar rotation.

A complex number should be thought of as the quotient of plane vectors: a quantity z = v/u which when multiplied by vector u yields v: that is zu = v.

(Important note: multiplication of a complex number by a vector is not commutative, zu ≠ uz.)

For more: http://geocalc.clas.asu.edu/pdf/OerstedMedalLecture.pdf