Etymology of "Astartes"?

[MarqFJA87]

Has Rick Priestley or any of the other early developers of WH40K ever talked about how they came up with the name "Astartes"? I've seen plenty of speculation around the fan base over the years pointing to the Ancient Near Eastern goddess Astarte (who is a Northwest Semitic equivalent of the East Semitic Ishtar), blending of Latin aster/astrum with English star as (potential) sources for the name, but never found any official statement on the matter from the people who created it in the first place. And obviously, the "Amar Astarte" explanation not only postdates the introduction of "Astartes" as a name by decades, but only counts as a Watsonian (in-universe) answer, whereas I'm looking for the Doylist (out-of-universe) one.

 

If no such official statement exists, is there a way to send the question to them and get the answer? Does any of them do public AMAs from time to time, for example?

[LameBeard]

As it’s a shortening of Adeptus Astartes (like Adeptus Custodes or Adeptus Titanicus), in High Gothic it must be an adjective (that then gets used as a noun because the full phrase too cumbersome).

I always assumed it was a corruption of Latin “Astra/astrum etc” to mean “of the stars” since High Gothic isn’t perfect Latin, but maybe that’s not close enough? But Custodes does mean ‘guards’ and titanic does mean ‘really big’ so that seemed enough for me…

[Ayatollah_of_Rock_n_Rolla]

Some support for the "astra" might be possibly offered here, see the text. But I've never read any official explanation.

 

Edited November 8, 2025 by Ayatollah_of_Rock_n_Rolla

[Doghouse]

On 11/7/2025 at 6:53 PM, LameBeard said:

As it’s a shortening of Adeptus Astartes (like Adeptus Custodes or Adeptus Titanicus), in High Gothic it must be an adjective (that then gets used as a noun because the full phrase too cumbersome).

I always assumed it was a corruption of Latin “Astra/astrum etc” to mean “of the stars” since High Gothic isn’t perfect Latin, but maybe that’s not close enough? But Custodes does mean ‘guards’ and titanic does mean ‘really big’ so that seemed enough for me…

 

Yeah that's it exactly, Adeptus Astartes is 'adepts of the stars' in low gothic. I think it may have been ADB that mentioned it years ago. I think it was a conversation about how Astartes as a single noun didn't make sense because it was of the stars. 

[LameBeard]

I suspect that GW deliberately introduced the corruption because “Astro” is already a too-common loan word from Latin, and has more of a retro-sci-fi feel.

[Lord Nord in Gravis Armour]

I always figured it was a nod to Astarte in Paradise Lost, where she may have been just one of the fallen angels ("Emperor's Angels", anyone?) but her worship also consisted of nightly vows ("oath of moment", anyone?)

 

But at this point, I'm not at all surprised if they picked the name simply because it had "star" in it.