In any case, the verb affect has had so many meanings that just about all the noun forms have been exhausted on rare, obsolete, or specialized meanings. The other is the so-called frequentative form affectare, meaning "to aim or strive for." One is the Latin verb afficere, meaning "to affect, move, influence, impress," among other things. Part of the reason is that it actually derives from two sources.
If you're thinking that affect has had a lot of meanings over the years, you're right. This time, it goes with a specialized meaning of affect: "to have an influence on someone emotionally." What about a change in the stress, pronouncing the verb "af-FECT" and the noun "AFF-ect"? Shoot! Once again, we already have that noun, and once again, it doesn't have the meaning we want. But it doesn't cover "the act of affecting something," which is the meaning we're after. Well, then, how about affectation? That's the noun form for a meaning of affect that we still do have: to deliberately aim at something, like a British accent, or an air of amused detachment. Unfortunately, it's the noun form for a meaning of affect that we don't have anymore: to have a liking for something. For the verb affect, we could have had the noun form affection.
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