Coming up with names....

[Brother Ambroz]

So I've been writing down a fluffy background for my army and I've got everything set......except the names! I know I know that's kinda important but I've only been able to think up one name for my Lord but I can't think up anything for my vehicles or squad names. I think it's that I'm not very creative in that perspective, so I was curious how do you come up with names for your guys in your army's fluff? Any help is appreciated!

[Neuroth]

How is the army themed?

[Brother Ambroz]

They're Night Lords. Right now the lord is focused on building his army. Alot like ADB's night lords, they use chaos more as a tool though than Talos's band, one of the squads for ex. is a beserker squad. They captured a warp beast which is what I use as a DP. They'll be launching terror strikes on imperial worlds once I've gotten the army all painted up and fluff established.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Personally, I imagine Nostramo as being more italian-style in language (well, they do have the Mafia), rather than the ever-present Latin used for pretty much everything, so I've taken many names from Inferno in the Divine Comedy. My Lord though, Caerolion, was a spur-of-the-moment naming when I needed to name my Lord for the Eye of Terror campaign, and it's stuck ever since then.

[GooseDaMoose]

Something like that works, yeah. My army is loosely based on the Makhnovists so I get all my names from famous anarchists. The thing is just to find one thing you wanna go with. Nostraman being all slithery and snake-like you could go with.. I dunno lol cool-sounding Indian names? (not trying to be mean here, I just thought of a culture with a lot of snake symbolism - so you could also try Mesoamerican names; Aztec and Mayan cultures.) Or you could go for Nostraman culture instead of language, and with Italy being basically run by the Mafia, I suppose it'd be the most similar.

[Brother Ambroz]

Ah those are good ideas guys thanks for the help. How about vehicles? If you name them, how'd you come up wit those?

[Lord_Caerolion]

As I said, there's a literal crud-ton of names in the Inferno. I took almost everything from it, except from Caerolion, and a chaplain called Azazel.

[Hyaenidae]

Use Google translator and type in fun names,then translate them from your primary language to Latin...for example, 'symphony of screams' roughly translates to 'Deus Enim Clamoribus'. Even if the translation is a touch shoddy, it still sounds cool as hell, which is what matters. Doing some research into mythology helps too, greek, roman, etc. In your case, looks for gods and spirits of misery, terror, pain, etc. Hope this helps.

[Khestra the Unbeheld]

Dictionaries of baby names are invaluable for choosing first names. Given that Astartes characters can come with one, two, or even multiple names depending on the naming conventions of their originating planet or whatever rote or ritual their Legion/Chapter may impose on them, that's typically enough for secondary and tertiary characters. Family names, you either make them up as you go, or pick a culture or location and start taking from there.

[ShiftyWolf]

So far I have been basing my character names off the names of angels and then modifying them a bit... Don't know why I chose the names of angels in the first place but it kick started me...

 

And I only really use actual names for my Lords/characters.

 

For squads I just came up on the spot with Vengeance and Infamy and the like.

[Brother Nihm]

For vehicles I've always been a huge fan of names/titles along the lines of: Eternity of Pain (spiky landraider from an old WD), The Warpborne (ship), Desolation, The Blade of Horus, etc.

 

 

For names I do like GooseDaMoose and look up names slightly related to a certain country/region or timeperiod.

 

 

Beware though, I once had a Chaos Lord whose name meant 'ear' in finnish. :)

[KaosRaptor]

There are always name generators online too, I remember the GW site used to have one for Dark Angels I think, before the site format changed.

For instance, I managed to find one for ships, which could be used for most vehicles, and came up with some of these:

Heartless Ruination, Black Desecration, Curse of Carrion, Doom of Angels, Angel's Agony, etc. I plan on using Unholy Torment for my forces, but hopefully those give you a few ideas. :tu:

[Sons of Horus]

I don't always use specific themes but when I do I usually follow the culture of the chapter or legion. An example would be Traitor Marines having more brutal and intimidating names like "Satyrius" or "Therion" (please don't copy because I plan to use these two <_<). It really depends I guess.

[Yaj]

Names can be tricky to come up with so don't get to worried if nothing springs to mind straight away.

 

I personally have two methods of creating names.

 

The first method won't help you but my imagination as the irritating habit of coming up with names/ideas when I'm no were near a computer or paper. These names/ideas however are usually poorly thought out and normally forgotten by the time I've gotten near a computer/notepad.

 

2. Is to take the character of the chapter/legion and begin either writing down or saying it out loud any and all names that pop into your head. Even if they're nothing better than 'James' or 'Bob' eventually I find that certain names or part of names from the list will start to stick out. Take these and experiment further until you have a name you're happy with.

 

You may find it useful to take a name of an already established character/chapter and experiment by adding or taking parts of it away to see what you get.

[mrtn]

An example would be Traitor Marines having more brutal and intimidating names like "Satyrius" or "Therion" (please don't copy because I plan to use these two :lol:).

I promise not to copy your original idea.

[Frater Uriah]

I picked the names for my Word Bearers from a variety of sources. For my Dark Apostle, Aristikapha, I looked up Angelic Names online and found "World of Distortion," which translated to Aristikapha. Absolutely perfect for my Dark Apostle of the Sixth Great Host and counts-as Abaddon.

 

For my Coryphaeus, Zafarkhel, Architect of Woe... well, that one kind of happend by accident. I was sitting through a briefing on what our guys were doing in Afghanistan, and one of the towns mentioned in the area was Zafarkhel. I thought Zafarkhel would be an awesome name for a Chaos Lord, and, lo, was Zafarkhel the Architect of Woe born.

 

My Daemon Prince, Dhu'Ko'Dah'Khis'Ss, has two names: the Daemonic, which I actually rolled at random in the Daemonic Name Generator in the old Realms of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness book from way back when. His Colchisian name, Captain Ard Vadoth, came to me spontaneously when I was typing his history.

 

I agree with everybody who has posted before here. There are all sorts of sources available, and you never know when you might stumble upon a winner.

[Argon]

For my Oblivion Knights, my official criteria is "Does it sound cool when I say it?" :P .

 

In reality, this has turned into taking lots of names from the Baltic area, mostly Lithuanian and Finnish. I'm currently using more Finnish than anything because it sounds cool when I say it and the Finns are good inspiration for Space Marines.

 

 

Wait a minute.....

 

Beware though, I once had a Chaos Lord whose name meant 'ear' in finnish.

 

Ah, that's nothing. I named one of my Captains the Finnish word for "axe". Naturally, he's going to wield a battle-axe when I finally get around to making him.