The word you could be looking for is variant
Definition:
1 obsolete : variable
2 : manifesting variety, deviation, or disagreement
3 : varying usually slightly from the standard form
(examples) variant readings;
variant spellings
Also, from google search:
First of all, as Peter Shor says in the comments:
You should not consider /t.n̩/ /tn̩/ and /tən/ three different
pronunciations. These are all essentially the same, and I am really
surprised that any dictionary distinguishes between the first and the
second.
These differences may sometimes be used to represent a difference in pronunciation, but more often they are simply transcriptional variants.
Moving on to the words listed: it mainly depends on the history of each word. This is not really very helpful to know, as it suggests that you have to look up the pronunciation of each one individually. That is in fact the safest option. However, sometimes there are word parts that you can identify that have a shared pronunciation between many words.
One of these parts appears to be the -on ending used mainly in words derived from Greek: although it has no single source historically, these words tend to be pronounced similarly with the sound /ɒn/. This ending is discussed more in the answer to this question: Why do photons and protons exhibit such anomalous behavior?
It's not clear, but I'll speculate that one reason why these words are pronounced with an unreduced vowel is because they are more "learned" terms, so people base their pronunciation more on the spelling. Another relevant factor is that these are all relatively recently coined words; Marcus_33's answer to that question says:
Proton began appearing in science literature in the 1920's. Every
other subatomic particle name has been coined since then - these words
are all less than 100 years old. They all originated after the
invention of audio recordings, and none are used commonly enough to be
changed by regional dialects.
The words cotton and mutton come from French coton and mouton respectively. But they entered English a long time ago (during the Middle English period), as indicated by their altered spelling compared to the French, and the placement of stress (on the first syllable). Since the second syllables are unstressed, the vowel became "reduced" here to a schwa sound /ə/. The schwa, when followed by the sound /m/, /n/, /l/, or /r/, may also be transcribed with the subsequent consonant as a syllabic consonant. This is what /n̩/ means.
For the word wanton, the parts appear to come from Old English, and the word has existed at least since Middle English, so it also has undergone many changes in pronunciation over time, among them reduction of the second vowel.
So the advice I would give: if you can tell that the word came from Greek, or if it is the name of a physical particle, it is probably pronounced with
/ɒn/. Otherwise, it is probably pronounced with /n̩/~/ən/ (What I mean with the ~ is that you can use either pronunciation interchangeably). And if you don't know for sure, look it up in a good pronunciation dictionary! (Because there are also words that don't follow the rule I gave, like crouton (from French), which the OED lists as /ˈkruːtɒ̃/, but for which I've always used the pronunciation /ˈkruːtɒn/).
Best Answer
Based on the example you've given, I think the most clear answer is:
Words like "nite" as in "Nick at Nite" or "thru" as in "Drive Thru", "tonite" as in "Tonite Only", even "donut" as in "Dunkin' Donuts", are all marketing and advertisement inventions--mostly of the American variety. While donut predates Dunkin' Donuts by about 100 years, most Americans who spell it without the -gh are purchasers of Dunkin' and other chains that have adopted the abbreviated spelling.
I remember reading in an Advertising textbook that the spelling choices in Nick at Nite were based on a desire for balance in the design of the logo: two four-letter words separated by "at", and the removal of the descender "g" to keep a clear visual line and give the two words a squared-off appearance:
I suppose there's a similar mentality in removing the descender "g" in thru, tonite, lite, et al.
The Chicago Tribune published this in 2011 about misspellings in advertisements:
Clearly, the effect of such misspellings is the stimulation that comes from the visual interruption of seeing common words in altered forms, which sometimes is doubly-impactful when uncommon letters like "x" as in xtrem sports and "z" as in Cheez Whiz are substituted. This stimulation triggers memory, which in turn triggers brand loyalty.
To give this type of misspelling a little more context, there were efforts in the early 20th century to simplify the spelling of English in the States. Andrew Carnegie founded the Simplified Spelling Board, which sought to simplify and shorten the spelling of many common words so children could memorize them more easily, and so typesetters could save a few cents spelling "wished" with a -t instead of an -ed, wisht. The New York Times, The Chicago Tribue, and Melvin Dewey of the Dewey Decimal System were all supporters of SSB. Before them, Benjamin Franklin and Noah Webster also supported spelling reform on the basis of simplification and phoneticization. With such strong support for spelling reform, it makes sense that the taboo surrounding misspelled words in big print media outlets lifted.
While the SSB disbanded because Carnegie believed that its spelling suggestions were too prescriptive, the rationale carried on in the scholarship of Advertisement and Marketing where manipulated spelling, as in the title of this book on advertising: "Spelling Manipulation and Present Day Advertising" (1923), was a common trope of the field. Today the reasons to misspell words in adverts go beyond logo designs. With the importance of google ad words, for instance, a company that can brand themselves with a misspelled name can purchase ad words on the cheap and can likely find open web addresses with greater ease.
So, while there are terms like manipulated spelling, which advertising scholars have used for nearly a century, and there are any number of these somewhat facetious terms:
it is better to understand some of the motives of advertisement and marketing to give a more foundational understanding for why these spelling choices are made.