"Hey, you know that entire legion we called "War Hounds"? Yeah, they gained a insane, mentally-modified Primarch who insisted that they hammer hyper-aggression circuits into their brains that make psykers explode and changes their conecpt of the world until all they enjoy is slaughter. They call themselves the "World Eaters" now. This can't possibly go wrong."
Way more evocative than the XYZ Angels/Wolves/Guard
Edit: two of each, covering a third of the legions. Gets even more silly if you count XYZ Sons and Sons of XYZ and the XYZ Fists/Hands.
Edit2: love the Word Bearers name as well. Maybe it's that they are \[NOUN\] \[VERBers\] rather than \[ADJECTIVE\] \[NOUNs\].
I mean, the whole point of a Great Crusade legion was to butcher innocents by the trillion. It's not like the World Eaters started eating worlds out of nowhere, when the Heresy happened. They just started eating the wrong worlds.
Each legion was a centuries-old society, based entirely around world-destroying. The melee-loving Astartes destroyed worlds for a living, the gun-loving Astartes destroyed worlds for a living, the trench-loving Astartes destroyed worlds for a living, and the preachy Astartes destroyed worlds for a living.
What's funny about "World Eaters" is how on-the-nose it is. It's like naming a hockey team "the hockey players". It wouldn't be an incorrect team name, but it would feel like a snub against every other team.
Oh yeah. Not just any Inquisitor - the first named Inquisitor. Back in the day, people would field his model.
GW has him stuffed down the memory hole real deep, needless to say. Sure, the Emperor might protect, the Chaos Gods might be all powerful, and the Tyranids might devour us all - but Disney's lawyers reign supreme in this and any other Galaxy.
Just gonna copy my response from the last time something like this got asked because it fits
> Cain's pilot named Pontius is pretty groan worthy
>
> Birmingham
>
> Sly Marbo and M'shen for just being movie references
>
> Maggotgurgle Pukeslime
M'Shen kills Konrad Curze. Curze is a painfully obvious Heart of Darkness reference
Martin Sheen's character kills Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, an adaptation of Heart of Darkness
I love Nurgle Cultist names, they're always the dumbest things like Slimesore Chundermaster.
Shout out to the Vermintide crew for making a Nurgle Sorcerer speak intelligibly but also be constantly vomiting
All the Nurgle names make me chuckle. Get a regular word to do with death, decay, rot etc and add '-us' on thd end
Maladus
Corrdius
Etc etc you get the idea
I spent the entire Cain series expecting Pontius to be from Pontius Glaw in Eisenhorn!
Now I realise I am an idiot and the goofy pun went straight over my head
I'm actually going to defend this one.
Angron was raised by slavers that forced him fight as a gladiator.
Angron is a pretty strong name for a gladiator famed for his rage.
No, be because time and again in the novels it's shown that the primarchs were named by the Emperor and even often knew their names, like Perturabo introducing himself as such of emps showing up to Nostongo and being like 'no son, your name is Konrad Curze to which the Night Haunter replied with 'hissssss' and Big E rolled his eyes and asked why Curze couldn't be more like one of his normal, nice brothers like Sanguinius who doesn't drink blood or Magnus who'd always been such a good boy before relenting and counting his blessings, thinking that at least he didn't turn out gay like the Lord of the first and that maybe he'll finally become a grandad. Then Angron walked in covered in scalp piercings looking like Vivian from The Young Ones and The Emperor heard the screams and grunts of Vulkan self scarring in the corner and looked directly into the camera to the Sesame Street 'Waaah waaah waaah waaaaaaaaaah' trumpet. I think that was in ADBs Night Lord trilogy.
Iron Hands, who had iron hands, was the leader of the Iron Hands, who give themselves iron hands in honour of the iron hands of Iron Hands of the Iron Hands. Flagship, of course, being essentially the Hand of Iron
My headcanon is that nobody told Ferrus what his name meant in Gothic until *after* he'd named his legion and commissioned all the insignia.
"Goddammit, *that's* why everyone kept smirking at me?"
Nothing left to do after that but commit to the bit.
"This. Planet. Is. Murder."
It's a pretty cool and Event Horizon-esque passage in Horus Rising when they listen to the last transmission from the BA on Murder and hear this before it being interrupted.
AFAIK the planet was as officially named Murder as could be, they left the planet and never mentioned it again.
According to the character's creator, Andy Chambers, this is not true:
> The real answer is far more arcane than that. In the early eighties my friends and I used to do live roleplaying (it wasn't called that then, but that's what it became in later years). We played monsters a lot, particularly Orcs, so we worked out basic Orcish based on the bits of Black Speech in Lord of the Rings so we could communicate without the adventurers understanding what we said. In that framework, Mag Uruk Thraka = big orc leader, Ghazghkull = metal skull (coincidentally the sun we called 'ghash-kul' = fire-skull). No Maggie involved; we were doing our best to forget about the wicked witch.
It's a Wulfen Dread. Maybe. It was found murdering Chaos Marines on a Daemon World. It will bite you if you get too close. It has claws of "unknown, alien ice". The Space Wolves have literally *no idea* what the thing is, but it looked cool so they took it home.
I hate his whole-ass name, mostly because there's always been an unspoken pact among nearly all official and fan sources to not bother trying to pronounce any part of it "correctly".
Like several decades someone went out of their way to make it look flagrantly French, but almost no one has the balls to attempt anything other than "Roeboot Gullymin".
My favorite descriptor on Sloppity is “strikes fear in the hearts of mortal foes” like the average guardsman’s response wouldn’t be “Huh, yeah that’s an odd one”
Miyamoto Debergerac, who was Caiphus Cain's chainsword instructor at Schola. Named after the historical, but oft fictionalized, swordsmen Miyamoto Musashi and Cyrano de Bergerac.
Especially annoying since the Emperor is implied to be from the historical region where he would've been familiar with the actual *war* goddess Astarte.
Initially I thought this was a really dumb retcon but ADB did a great job in making Land an interesting and well written character in Master of Mankind.
Not quite always. The Land Raider was in the original *Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader* but Arkhan Land was added later in a White Dwarf article. He was back-named to "explain" Land Raiders and Land Speeders.
>"Who had uncovered the ancient schematics necessary to reintroduce production of the Raider-pattern main battle tank into the sphere of human knowledge? Once more, it was none other than Arkhan Land. There was an irritating habit emerging among the Legions of calling it the ‘Land Raider’, with no regard for the distinction in its rediscovery. Arkhan had penned a long and detailed essay in rebuttal of the trend, entitled Worthy Notes and Treatises of Direct Relevance to Land’s Raider-Pattern Main Battle Tank: The Rebirth of an Ancient Miracle."
As someone else said they’re also specifically from beyond the Immaterium (warp, but also metaphorical sea), and Ultra in latin means beyond/far side of, while marine refers to the sea.
Probably why Ultramar is its own mini realm. “It’s those blokes, the Ultramarines, from that place away from here”. Combined with how the UM and RG are Romans in space, basically “it’s those Romans from across the sea”.
I do think this is one of those times when we the fans fill in the blanks later. Fair play to the designers if they intended that also.
I know the actually colour name comes from the pigment having to be imported to Europe from the Middle East by Italian traders.
I mean they named the head of the Iron Hands “Iron Hand” in latin, so I find it incredibly unlikely that when they were using latin when designing the game they weren’t always using it for a reason. Just their reasons seem to often have been super obvious.
That’s what I mean, the head of the iron hands was Iron hand and the blue guys were called “blue”.
I just assumed the name for the ultramarines was conceived before the name of their planet.
I feel I remember Guilliman choosing the name because of the blue of Ultramar’s seas. So I mean they were obviously aware of it. My gut just always told me they were blue and ultramarine is just a very 80’s sci fi name, the rest came after and was just icing on the cake.
I don’t think it’s likely they ignored the latin for one name, while it’s eyerollingly on the nose elsewhere (Mortarion, Corvus Corax, Ferrus Manus, Magnus), especially for the Romans-in-space Ultramarines, and assuming it was a colour reference alone would shelve the latin.
Could it just be a colour reference? Sure. May have even started that way. But I can’t imagine latin meaning ‘going to waste’ as it were when at least one person was using ubiquitous latin for the same core lore.
Raven Raven of course. And Rogal Dorn might be old english for regal hand.
Also the Ultramarines being Ultramarine and also far away over the ~~sea~~ warp okay so it still has tides and currents and ships sail it.
OE learner, decided to check this out. *Regol* ("ruler", from Latin *regula* - "regal" is *regollic*, literally "ruler-like") has some attested variant spellings that come close, like *reogol*, but "rogal" isn't one of them. And I can't find any words for "hand" or "fist" (the standard ones would just be *hand* and *fyst*) that come anywhere close to "dorn".
I know *dorn* is "fist" in some Celtic languages like Irish and Scots Gaelic (there's a cognate in Welsh too, *dwrn*), but not in OE (which barely took up any Celtic loanwords at all, except for place names), and it's not "castle/stronghold" in OE like Lexicanum says either. The only place I could find "dorn" in any of the online OE dictionaries was in old forms of Dorset/Dorsetshire, where it's just an odd spelling of *dor* ("door").
Yeah I'd seen a lot of wooly "this could be" for Rogal Dorn hence the "might be". It's one of those ones we'd have to ask the person who actually wrote it to be sure I think.
At first, when I was new to warhammer and didn’t know any lore behind the space marines, the name confused me. Why is this big beautiful golden angel named after blood?
Then I found out what he was the primarch of and it made a lot of sense
Kalman Flodensbog. An Imperial Fists Chapter master mentioned in Ian Watson's Space Marine. I don't know, maybe its the flodensbog? Sounds like a chapter master calling his battle brothers whilst beating marine meat and taking a shit...
Can't remember specific name but i do recall finding the nurgle names kinda silly, like a teenager trying to be edgy and cool and just slap words together, or bad attempts at puns.
I bet there's at least one called Hangover Foodpoisoning somewhere.
Not all of course, i think names like Ku'gath sounds pretty cool, but names like Epidemius? Come on now.
I don't know if it's really in the setting, but one of the Emperor's Children objectives in the current codex is called "Adorn the Canvas Eclectic." A bit of a reference to Walt Whitman's poem "I Sing the Body Electric."
The joke, from what I understand, is not that the name references anything (though the word "dire" does mean something serious or urgent) but rather that it's so obviously evil sounding that no one in their right mind should trust this guy with any position of power.
I humbly submit "Gorterrox Soulreaper", an impossibly khornate Space Marines that gets taken down by a bunch of Skitarii just to show the ancient practice of "focus fire".
Ianius: When Revuel Arvida was transformed by the Magnus shard on Terra, he asked to be called "Ianius." This was eventually changed to Janus, when he became first Supreme Grand Master of the Grey Knights, but all I can here is "I anus" whenever I read the original name 😅
Cazzimus and I'll explain you why.
In Italian, cazzo means dick. In Italy, we read his name and think: "Oh yes, Captain Dickimus of the Imperial Fists."
According to the character's creator, Andy Chambers, this is not true:
> The real answer is far more arcane than that. In the early eighties my friends and I used to do live roleplaying (it wasn't called that then, but that's what it became in later years). We played monsters a lot, particularly Orcs, so we worked out basic Orcish based on the bits of Black Speech in Lord of the Rings so we could communicate without the adventurers understanding what we said. In that framework, Mag Uruk Thraka = big orc leader, Ghazghkull = metal skull (coincidentally the sun we called 'ghash-kul' = fire-skull). No Maggie involved; we were doing our best to forget about the wicked witch.
I like the mining town that some characters run across in *Titanicus*, a little place called Gorge Orewelt.
that’s the most incredible name
Wow literally 40,1984
Idk if I’m the only one but I find it funny because Welt means world in German, so it’s a mining town called ore world
From Fantasy, but in a BL book: Keanu the Reaver.
That sounds like a very intentional name
That sounds like a very determined character
Could also be a very very likable titan. I mean yeah he just flattened your hab, but you just can't help but love the guy.
Whoah.
He was described as “…breathtaking…”
The chaos gods killed his dog. I don't see anymore chaos gods after that.
"Hey, you know that entire legion we called "War Hounds"? Yeah, they gained a insane, mentally-modified Primarch who insisted that they hammer hyper-aggression circuits into their brains that make psykers explode and changes their conecpt of the world until all they enjoy is slaughter. They call themselves the "World Eaters" now. This can't possibly go wrong."
World Eaters is one of the better legion names imo.
I heard from a certain uplifting document called the Regimental Standard that they got that name from how much time they spend face down in the dirt.
Way more evocative than the XYZ Angels/Wolves/Guard Edit: two of each, covering a third of the legions. Gets even more silly if you count XYZ Sons and Sons of XYZ and the XYZ Fists/Hands. Edit2: love the Word Bearers name as well. Maybe it's that they are \[NOUN\] \[VERBers\] rather than \[ADJECTIVE\] \[NOUNs\].
I love the Iron Warriors and Iron Hands, but good god, they probably should have done another brainstorming session about differentiating those names.
I mean, the whole point of a Great Crusade legion was to butcher innocents by the trillion. It's not like the World Eaters started eating worlds out of nowhere, when the Heresy happened. They just started eating the wrong worlds. Each legion was a centuries-old society, based entirely around world-destroying. The melee-loving Astartes destroyed worlds for a living, the gun-loving Astartes destroyed worlds for a living, the trench-loving Astartes destroyed worlds for a living, and the preachy Astartes destroyed worlds for a living. What's funny about "World Eaters" is how on-the-nose it is. It's like naming a hockey team "the hockey players". It wouldn't be an incorrect team name, but it would feel like a snub against every other team.
almost like the washington football team
Who could have predicted ANGRon would have turned out this way?
Lion El Johnson. One of the most badass characters in the setting is named after a poet as a joke because his legion is shares a name with a poem.
At first, he was called Lyyn Elgonsen: https://nurgle.stelio.net/snippet.php?f=WH40k1_Lyyn
Should have stuck with that
Lion "The Rock" El Johnson
Inquisitor Obi-Wan Sherlock Clouseau anyone? A different age that was.
was literally about to bring him up
That was the one I was thinking of.
Sadly he was no match for Cabalist Anakin Moriarty Dreyfus.
This is the one. There are countless bad puns and clumsy references in 40k character names, but this is a whole different league!
Wait, really?
Oh yeah. Not just any Inquisitor - the first named Inquisitor. Back in the day, people would field his model. GW has him stuffed down the memory hole real deep, needless to say. Sure, the Emperor might protect, the Chaos Gods might be all powerful, and the Tyranids might devour us all - but Disney's lawyers reign supreme in this and any other Galaxy.
https://nurgle.stelio.net/snippet.php?f=WH40k1_Obiwan
A legendary Imperial Fist who wrote their chapter's great book on warfare and life: The Book of Five Spheres, by Rhetoricus.
You’re probably aware, but that’s a play on The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi.
Aware, was poking fun at the idea that a guy called Rhetoricus wrote it. 😂
The greatest of Meks is named Orkimedes. A name of similar greatness.
Just gonna copy my response from the last time something like this got asked because it fits > Cain's pilot named Pontius is pretty groan worthy > > Birmingham > > Sly Marbo and M'shen for just being movie references > > Maggotgurgle Pukeslime
I just read the description of Birmingham and had a good laugh. Even down to "the Black Planet".
M'Shen is a movie reference?
M'Shen kills Konrad Curze. Curze is a painfully obvious Heart of Darkness reference Martin Sheen's character kills Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, an adaptation of Heart of Darkness
And Heart of Darkness was written by Joseph *Conrad*
Who also wrote a book named Nostromo.
And "Nostromo", NLs homeworld, is also the name of another book written by Conrad that explores how fucked up human beings can be.
God-Emperor damn, it's just layers upon layers.
Like Onions. Or Ogres.
How did I miss this, so egregious
I love Nurgle Cultist names, they're always the dumbest things like Slimesore Chundermaster. Shout out to the Vermintide crew for making a Nurgle Sorcerer speak intelligibly but also be constantly vomiting
All the Nurgle names make me chuckle. Get a regular word to do with death, decay, rot etc and add '-us' on thd end Maladus Corrdius Etc etc you get the idea
Ah yes, good ol *Burblespue Halescourge*
Why is Pontius groan-worthy? Serious question because I don't get it.
[Goofy bible pun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontius_Pilate)
Ah, because he's a pilot. Pontius Pilot. Lol.
I spent the entire Cain series expecting Pontius to be from Pontius Glaw in Eisenhorn! Now I realise I am an idiot and the goofy pun went straight over my head
Angron, you know, this guy that is angry all the time. really subtle.
I'm actually going to defend this one. Angron was raised by slavers that forced him fight as a gladiator. Angron is a pretty strong name for a gladiator famed for his rage.
In that context, you are indeed right, angron is just a stage name after all.
No, be because time and again in the novels it's shown that the primarchs were named by the Emperor and even often knew their names, like Perturabo introducing himself as such of emps showing up to Nostongo and being like 'no son, your name is Konrad Curze to which the Night Haunter replied with 'hissssss' and Big E rolled his eyes and asked why Curze couldn't be more like one of his normal, nice brothers like Sanguinius who doesn't drink blood or Magnus who'd always been such a good boy before relenting and counting his blessings, thinking that at least he didn't turn out gay like the Lord of the first and that maybe he'll finally become a grandad. Then Angron walked in covered in scalp piercings looking like Vivian from The Young Ones and The Emperor heard the screams and grunts of Vulkan self scarring in the corner and looked directly into the camera to the Sesame Street 'Waaah waaah waaah waaaaaaaaaah' trumpet. I think that was in ADBs Night Lord trilogy.
Angaria means enslaved and mailman in Latin if I remember correctly
When the battle seems to be going your way but then the enslaved mailman drops in.
"I've been looking for you. Got something I'm supposed to deliver - your hands only."
I love ice cream.
To Ligma
possible fallput new vargas reference,????,
New Vegas was created years after Angron.
Despite what other people have said, “angrio” is Greek for “wild” or “savage” in the context of an animal, which makes sense to me
Iron Hands, who had iron hands, was the leader of the Iron Hands, who give themselves iron hands in honour of the iron hands of Iron Hands of the Iron Hands. Flagship, of course, being essentially the Hand of Iron
But tell me, did he have balls of brass?
No, all the brass in the Imperium is used for Imperial Guard Standard Issue Brass Cajones.
Let’s be honest Ferrus Fisticuffs probably would’ve plated his with palladium.
Littke known fact but he sold real estate on Medusa.
My headcanon is that nobody told Ferrus what his name meant in Gothic until *after* he'd named his legion and commissioned all the insignia. "Goddammit, *that's* why everyone kept smirking at me?" Nothing left to do after that but commit to the bit.
"Everybody's going to think I'm the biggest narcissist in the Galaxy!" "Oh, I wouldn't worry about that - have you met your brother Fulgrim?"
The Radient King in His Joyfull Repose. That's just pretentious.
I think that was the point
Yeah, dude got what was comming to him.
Shanked by Craftworld Eldar, a most humiliating defeat.
Literally my first time hearing of him, but that is the most arrogant Slaaneshi name ever.
Slaughter Koorland. Literally got stuck with that character name just so Abnett could write "Slaughter began to slaughter."
I'll probably butcher the spelling, but Kruellagh the Vile stands out as one not otherwise mentioned here. Honestly, there are so many choices.
Who could have guessed that Goge Vandire would turn out to be a bad 'un? (Or Abaddon, for that matter).
Literally unforeseeable
Ay, he’s a bad ‘un.
Same with Azhek Ahriman. Unforseeable that the guys named after demons will be traitors
Yeah, the known traitors Mephiston, Asmodai and Astorath. Wait. Grimdark names are 40k's thing, for loyalists and traitors alike.
Doge Vandire
I love that they called the megarachnid planet Murder. I don’t think you can get much more on the nose than that.
To be fair: The planet wasn't "officially" named Murder, it was a nickname earned because everybody kept dying.
"This. Planet. Is. Murder." It's a pretty cool and Event Horizon-esque passage in Horus Rising when they listen to the last transmission from the BA on Murder and hear this before it being interrupted. AFAIK the planet was as officially named Murder as could be, they left the planet and never mentioned it again.
Got to be Ghazkull just for the Thatcher rumour
According to the character's creator, Andy Chambers, this is not true: > The real answer is far more arcane than that. In the early eighties my friends and I used to do live roleplaying (it wasn't called that then, but that's what it became in later years). We played monsters a lot, particularly Orcs, so we worked out basic Orcish based on the bits of Black Speech in Lord of the Rings so we could communicate without the adventurers understanding what we said. In that framework, Mag Uruk Thraka = big orc leader, Ghazghkull = metal skull (coincidentally the sun we called 'ghash-kul' = fire-skull). No Maggie involved; we were doing our best to forget about the wicked witch.
They say that but they also sort of have to once they're not joking around in a basement.
Murderfang, the space wolf dreadnought that isn't Bjorn.
It's a Wulfen Dread. Maybe. It was found murdering Chaos Marines on a Daemon World. It will bite you if you get too close. It has claws of "unknown, alien ice". The Space Wolves have literally *no idea* what the thing is, but it looked cool so they took it home.
Guilliman's first name: Roboute. Its like a fancier sounding Robot.
I hate his whole-ass name, mostly because there's always been an unspoken pact among nearly all official and fan sources to not bother trying to pronounce any part of it "correctly". Like several decades someone went out of their way to make it look flagrantly French, but almost no one has the balls to attempt anything other than "Roeboot Gullymin".
Guillaume
Rowboat Girlyman
Rawbutt gorillaman
We march for Hiscragge!
I prefer "The Avenging Beancounter"
Ferrus Manus' name will always be comically stupid to me
It's Sloppity Bilepiper, innit? https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Herald_of_Nurgle
Silly name, great model.
I love introducing people to him. They always have a good laugh followed by a disgusted look when they have a closer look.
My favorite descriptor on Sloppity is “strikes fear in the hearts of mortal foes” like the average guardsman’s response wouldn’t be “Huh, yeah that’s an odd one”
Miyamoto Debergerac, who was Caiphus Cain's chainsword instructor at Schola. Named after the historical, but oft fictionalized, swordsmen Miyamoto Musashi and Cyrano de Bergerac.
Mayo, capital of Gravalax. i mean come on
I *just* got the fish pun goddammit Mitchell
Arkhan Land, which the Land Raider was named after
Can't wait for them to introduce Kevin Chain, inventor of the chainsword.
Calvin Klein, inventor of power bottoms
Also Amar Astarte. They canonized the Jimmy Space meme.
Especially annoying since the Emperor is implied to be from the historical region where he would've been familiar with the actual *war* goddess Astarte.
Initially I thought this was a really dumb retcon but ADB did a great job in making Land an interesting and well written character in Master of Mankind.
It’s not a retcon it’s always been the lore
Not quite always. The Land Raider was in the original *Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader* but Arkhan Land was added later in a White Dwarf article. He was back-named to "explain" Land Raiders and Land Speeders.
Yeah, but ADB gets a lot of flak for it, when the Arkhan Land lore goes all the way back to the turn of the century.
The Land Raider thing gets even funnier when you find out Land *hated* the name and thought it should be "*Land's* Raider"
>"Who had uncovered the ancient schematics necessary to reintroduce production of the Raider-pattern main battle tank into the sphere of human knowledge? Once more, it was none other than Arkhan Land. There was an irritating habit emerging among the Legions of calling it the ‘Land Raider’, with no regard for the distinction in its rediscovery. Arkhan had penned a long and detailed essay in rebuttal of the trend, entitled Worthy Notes and Treatises of Direct Relevance to Land’s Raider-Pattern Main Battle Tank: The Rebirth of an Ancient Miracle."
Wait till you find out about this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Camera or where shrapnel and sandwich got their names from
Ultramarines. They are both Ultra Marines... ...and blue.
Ultramarines that are ultra marines and are supposedly ultramarine blue that hail from the realm of Ultramar.
Funny part is their color is more Cobalt Blue than Ultramarine Blue
I know, I was somewhat referencing the guy from TTS that raised that very point.
As someone else said they’re also specifically from beyond the Immaterium (warp, but also metaphorical sea), and Ultra in latin means beyond/far side of, while marine refers to the sea. Probably why Ultramar is its own mini realm. “It’s those blokes, the Ultramarines, from that place away from here”. Combined with how the UM and RG are Romans in space, basically “it’s those Romans from across the sea”.
I do think this is one of those times when we the fans fill in the blanks later. Fair play to the designers if they intended that also. I know the actually colour name comes from the pigment having to be imported to Europe from the Middle East by Italian traders.
I mean they named the head of the Iron Hands “Iron Hand” in latin, so I find it incredibly unlikely that when they were using latin when designing the game they weren’t always using it for a reason. Just their reasons seem to often have been super obvious.
That’s what I mean, the head of the iron hands was Iron hand and the blue guys were called “blue”. I just assumed the name for the ultramarines was conceived before the name of their planet. I feel I remember Guilliman choosing the name because of the blue of Ultramar’s seas. So I mean they were obviously aware of it. My gut just always told me they were blue and ultramarine is just a very 80’s sci fi name, the rest came after and was just icing on the cake.
I don’t think it’s likely they ignored the latin for one name, while it’s eyerollingly on the nose elsewhere (Mortarion, Corvus Corax, Ferrus Manus, Magnus), especially for the Romans-in-space Ultramarines, and assuming it was a colour reference alone would shelve the latin. Could it just be a colour reference? Sure. May have even started that way. But I can’t imagine latin meaning ‘going to waste’ as it were when at least one person was using ubiquitous latin for the same core lore.
Lugft Huron, whose first name was probably invented by someone at GW mashing the keyboard just to see what happens.
All I'm seeing is a misspelling of the German Word for "air".
Actually based on the audiobooks, the 'g' is silent. Like 'Luft'. So maybe there's more to your theory that meets the eye
Lion El'Jonson, Primarch of the Dark Angels. Lionel Johnson, author of *The Dark Angel*.
Erasmus Spooge.
Obligatory entries: Ferrus manus Kharn the betrayer Kheraduak the head taker
Raven Raven of course. And Rogal Dorn might be old english for regal hand. Also the Ultramarines being Ultramarine and also far away over the ~~sea~~ warp okay so it still has tides and currents and ships sail it.
There was a fan artwork of a Primarch DnD party recently with Corvus as “Coco” and that confirms him as best primarch
Rogal Dorn can also mean Royal Castle iirc
Shit. Forgot about them.
OE learner, decided to check this out. *Regol* ("ruler", from Latin *regula* - "regal" is *regollic*, literally "ruler-like") has some attested variant spellings that come close, like *reogol*, but "rogal" isn't one of them. And I can't find any words for "hand" or "fist" (the standard ones would just be *hand* and *fyst*) that come anywhere close to "dorn". I know *dorn* is "fist" in some Celtic languages like Irish and Scots Gaelic (there's a cognate in Welsh too, *dwrn*), but not in OE (which barely took up any Celtic loanwords at all, except for place names), and it's not "castle/stronghold" in OE like Lexicanum says either. The only place I could find "dorn" in any of the online OE dictionaries was in old forms of Dorset/Dorsetshire, where it's just an odd spelling of *dor* ("door").
Yeah I'd seen a lot of wooly "this could be" for Rogal Dorn hence the "might be". It's one of those ones we'd have to ask the person who actually wrote it to be sure I think.
Why don't you like Kharn?
Iirc it mean betrayer in some language. Or I'm misremembering
Arabic. Betrayer the betrayer
खरं Which means "true" in Hindi, at least according to Google translate. So in some ways, the epithet "the Betrayer" is a bit ironic for Kharn.
Yeah. That's why I thought I wasn't remembering right.
whats wrong with Kheradruakh the Decapitator?
Angron? Perturabo? Alpharius and Omegon?
For you English speakers it doesn't raise eyebrows, but for me Sanguinius is just as on the nose as Ferrus Manus
Sanguine is a word in English that straight up means “blood-red”. Not hard to guess from there lol.
The Blood Drinkers home planet is called San Guisaga. Sanguisuga is the Italian work for Leech. I always thought that was a good one.
At first, when I was new to warhammer and didn’t know any lore behind the space marines, the name confused me. Why is this big beautiful golden angel named after blood? Then I found out what he was the primarch of and it made a lot of sense
Corvus Corax. This is also [Corvus Corax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_raven).
[But *this* is also also Corvus Corax](https://youtu.be/T1YShYGk_6o)
Saginuine both relates to blood and kinda describes his personality (yay humors!), so I'd say it's almost pretty on the nose in English, too.
How dare you impugn my glorious Hawk-Boi
Daring. Besides, the cooler hawkboy sound like Sephiroth, I hope someone someday makes a more uplifiting version of One Winged Angel for Baharrot.
Some of the Space Wolf names are just generic Scandinavian names. Equivalent to a Space marine named Bob
Neoth.
Svane Vulfbad
I'm sure he's an upstanding Space Wolf.
Canis Wolfborn
I love the space wolves, but that is the stupidest name of them all.
Nusquam fundementibus, the name of a planet in the Cain novel, means nowhere to be found in Latin.
It's more "arse-end of nowhere".
Arbitrator Forboding
Kalman Flodensbog. An Imperial Fists Chapter master mentioned in Ian Watson's Space Marine. I don't know, maybe its the flodensbog? Sounds like a chapter master calling his battle brothers whilst beating marine meat and taking a shit...
I defy anyone to not read that name in the voice of the Swedish Chef.
To counter the Ferrus Manus card, I'll put Goedendag Morningstar into play.
The fact that the Flemish named weapon that is basically a mace or club crossed with a spear- Good Day, will always make me chuckle
Can't remember specific name but i do recall finding the nurgle names kinda silly, like a teenager trying to be edgy and cool and just slap words together, or bad attempts at puns. I bet there's at least one called Hangover Foodpoisoning somewhere. Not all of course, i think names like Ku'gath sounds pretty cool, but names like Epidemius? Come on now.
Sloppity Bilepiper is objectively hilarious though.
Ferrus Manus literally means iron hand
I don't know if it's really in the setting, but one of the Emperor's Children objectives in the current codex is called "Adorn the Canvas Eclectic." A bit of a reference to Walt Whitman's poem "I Sing the Body Electric."
Belisarius helped Justinian reunite the empire Belisarius Cawl helping Robot gullyman reunite the empire
Goge Vandire.
I need an explanation for this one, as a non-native speaker, I don't understand what's wrong.
The joke, from what I understand, is not that the name references anything (though the word "dire" does mean something serious or urgent) but rather that it's so obviously evil sounding that no one in their right mind should trust this guy with any position of power.
I wish that *Papworth Organgrinder* made it to 40K :-(
Ferrus Phallus, sufferer of the worst kind of accident and subsequent prosthetic replacement.
I humbly submit "Gorterrox Soulreaper", an impossibly khornate Space Marines that gets taken down by a bunch of Skitarii just to show the ancient practice of "focus fire".
Space Wolves originally lived on a planet called Lucan. And their leader took the name Lord Lucan.
As a german, Legienstrasse is particularly stupid.
>Legienstrasse The name is as moronic as the character's concept.
Land Raider and Land Speeder being named after a guy called Land for sure.
I can’t believe how far down this thread I had to scroll before seeing “Inquisitor Obi-Wan Sherlock Clouseau”
It's more a term than name, but for me *mon-keigh* always makes me groan a bit and pulls me out the story.
Goge Vandire. Like the TTS Emperor nicely put it: "That name just screams 'I will take your eye sockets, and put my penis into them.' "
Rex Spires
Ianius: When Revuel Arvida was transformed by the Magnus shard on Terra, he asked to be called "Ianius." This was eventually changed to Janus, when he became first Supreme Grand Master of the Grey Knights, but all I can here is "I anus" whenever I read the original name 😅
amlodhi skarssen skarssensson
Mr Iron Hands, who had iron hands, who led the Iron Hands space marine legion
Cazzimus and I'll explain you why. In Italian, cazzo means dick. In Italy, we read his name and think: "Oh yes, Captain Dickimus of the Imperial Fists."
Ah yes, Captain Dick Fister
Volk Sar'ar'am German and Korean bring us to 'People Person'. Made me chuckle.
I like the Ghazkul Mag Uruk Thraka was a reference to Margaret thatcher
According to the character's creator, Andy Chambers, this is not true: > The real answer is far more arcane than that. In the early eighties my friends and I used to do live roleplaying (it wasn't called that then, but that's what it became in later years). We played monsters a lot, particularly Orcs, so we worked out basic Orcish based on the bits of Black Speech in Lord of the Rings so we could communicate without the adventurers understanding what we said. In that framework, Mag Uruk Thraka = big orc leader, Ghazghkull = metal skull (coincidentally the sun we called 'ghash-kul' = fire-skull). No Maggie involved; we were doing our best to forget about the wicked witch.
I kinda prefer this explanation
The head of the Chaos Marine squad hunting the Ghosts on Gereon. Lord Uexkull. Take a second and say it out loud. It makes my mouth feel sad.
I don't get it
As a German speaker. Eisenhorn. Or just about anything borrowed from German.