What if you called the chainrings high/middle/low and the cogs 1 through 8. That way you would say you were in high 8 and shifted to high 6. 'Cause really, the front chainrings are more like high range, middle range, low range and all the real shifting is in the back. I've never really heard any reasonable agreed upon way of talking about gears, most people seem to say something similar to my proposal but call it the big ring, middle or granny.