Would you call it level or depth?

Question

Which word would you pick to label the absolute stack level of an element—in other words its degree of nesting relative to the root/document element?

Between level and depth which one would you choose and why? What is commonly used or preferred? Which one would you find less confusing in the absence of a meaningful context?

I tried checking the XML specification without much success.

Answer 1

I call it Depth.

As we know, XML is a Node based structure.

We all know that in Data Structures we use both terms at widely.

If we talk about a Binary Tree structure we generally say

In which depth level a node is situated/located?

We also use this term in DFS (Depth First Search) and BFS (Breadth First Search). When we go down we call it level depth/down (deep) and when we go up we call it level up. So level represents position at specific point but depth represents How Deep it is. Below is an representation of what I would like to convey

In XML, if we want to find out elements that are at a deeper level (depth) we use descendant. What does it means? We're referring to the depth level of the element.

In AVL Binary Tree, generally, we count the level of a Node and based on it we rotate the tree to make it balanced.

In other words,

The depth of a node is the length of the path to its root (i.e., its root path) or depth is the is maximum distance from any node to root.

The level of a node is the number of nodes on the longest path from the node to a leaf.

Reference from wikipedia

But if we talk about XML Structure, the term Depth is best to represent XML Nodes. So I choose Depth.

Edit: Thanks to @Alex for his valuable edition. After his addition I also edited few things to improve the answer.

Answer 2

To me level means going up, and depth means going down.

So I'd pick depth.

But I've learned a rule: If you can't pick between two options it's because both options are equally good, so flip a coin and move on.