Warhammer names, pronunciation and pet peeves

[Arikel]

Just a few funny thoughts I had prompted by a WH influencer type (Taiga Tiger) who said they often pronounce Cadia as Canadia. One on that and another on the pronunciation of a couple chaos gods that have always  bugged me.

 

Cadia,Cajia, Canadia

 

”Hehe. That happens, also sometimes cajuns for me(which comes from Acadian, the name for the original french of Canada’s Eastern coast provinces, many of whom were deported to Louisiana  by the British when they took over those places from the french) so gets there a second time in the end from a weird angle.”

 

The Masterful Mage and Lord of Change Tzeentch himself AKA why thy creepy blue librarian that loves “Forbidden Ultimate Knowledge” was bullied in highschool

 

”

I have no idea how to pronounce Slaanesh or Tzeentch properly. Despite the double vowel  I cannot imagine it as anything other than Sla-nesh and tzeentch for me rhymes with stench. 
Apparently it should sound like slay-nesh and zee-tnch. 

Slay-nesh i can get my mind around but the first time I heard someone say tzeentch properly I nearly died laughing. 

I was a scrawny nerdling bullied back in the days before dial up internet myself and no wonder zeench is always depicted as a puny looking skinny bird who loves books and lives in a library. 

Zeench is totally the way dumb jock bullies like the Emprah and Khorne would mispronounce a person’s name incorrectly as they torture you for kicks. 

Meanwhile hottie Slay  laughs when the boys do you dirty, even though they treat you nice when the hunks aren’t around and/or needs some help with their schoolwork. 

Your buddy Nurgle fidgets nervously, big as he is he’s all soft and flabby where those guys are built like bricks, and the one time he tried to really help he had an asthma attack so bad he went to hospital in an ambulance. Now he stays quiet, for all his sympathy glad they’re picking on “zeench” and are leaving him alone right now.

Zeeench really? It sounds so weenie and just conjures up similar images in my mind to the story above while instantly making me both cringe and wince in sympathetic embarrassment, and think how tough parts of childhood were(likely still are for many) when I was young.”

[Karhedron]

The appalling mangling of C 'tan is terrible. Honestly, how hard can that one be?

 

Apparently the answer is "very"! 

[Lathe Biosas]

3 hours ago, Karhedron said:

The appalling mangling of C 'tan is terrible. Honestly, how hard can that one be?

 

Apparently the answer is "very"! 

 

I thought it was pretty easy to pronounce when they were first introduced in the board game: Settlers of C'tan.

[grailkeeper]

There used to be huge Internet flame wars about whether it was lasgun or lazgun. Audiobooks sorted that one out.

[Lathe Biosas]

I just used the tried and true method of "How does Rick Priestly pronounce it." If anyone disagreed, I'd say, "That's cool. When did you invent Warhammer?"

[Karhedron]

9 hours ago, grailkeeper said:

There used to be huge Internet flame wars about whether it was lasgun or lazgun. Audiobooks sorted that one out.

 

So which one is it? I always assumed it was lazgun and never even considered any other pronunciation.

[Lathe Biosas]

16 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

 

So which one is it? I always assumed it was lazgun and never even considered any other pronunciation.

 

Duncan Rhodes pronounces it "lazz-gun" (with a short "a" like in jazz or lass)

[grailkeeper]

Lazgun instead of Layzgun

[LSM]

IIRC, GW have specifically noted that Abaddon is not pronounced "A-bad-un" but I'm going to keep calling him that anyway. ('Cause he is a right bad 'un.)

 

I've also heard people pronounce Lucius like "Loo-ky-us" rather than "Loo-shus", which misses (what I assumed was the intended) similarity to the word luscious.

[Kommisar_K]

I can't stop pronouncing Lucius "Lu-she-us"

 

Tzeentch rhyming with "stench" got me laughing. Sounds very Nurgle. 

 

Lastly, I've got a love-hate relationship with the long consonant-filled names, often vaguely Greek or Roman. Like, the Imperium's language is basically fake-Latin as far as I can tell, but after a bit it feels like Brother Constipacius Chudicus could fit right in and no one would be any the wiser. Reminds you of a certain Roman emperor. 

   Then I got the Nemesis Claw & started naming my own characters...

[Valkyrion]

I set up a sleepy time war in heaven youtube podcast thing the other night to send me off to sleep but had to turn it off as soon as they said 'setan' instead of 'catan'. 

There's a 40k youtube gaming channel that also says it like that, and as soon as I remember which one it is I will remember never to watch them again solely because of it. 

 

 

[Cleon]

On 8/30/2026 at 9:50 AM, grailkeeper said:

Lazgun instead of Layzgun

I recently encountered a video where they said Laze-gun (to sound like raise) with a rising intonation in the middle, I genuinely had never considered anyone would say it like that.

 

Now, the controversial one...

Tyranids

 

'Tie' ranids (like Tie fighter)

 

or 'Ti' ranids (like Timothy)

[kabaakaba]

Lucius - ˈluːtsius

Abaddon - אֲבַדּוֹן - ăḇadōn - Destructor 

It's funny how YouTubers twisting the name especially roman or jewish In case of Abaddon.

Can't remember but there is guy who pronounce LOzgun

1 hour ago, Valkyrion said:

I set up a sleepy time war in heaven youtube podcast thing the other night to send me off to sleep but had to turn it off as soon as they said 'setan' instead of 'catan'. 

There's a 40k youtube gaming channel that also says it like that, and as soon as I remember which one it is I will remember never to watch them again solely because of it. 

 

 

Ain't c'tan reads as k:tan with hard k

[Lathe Biosas]

1. There is a pronunciation guide in the back of the Warhammer 40,000 Character Encyclopedia for all the characters featured in the book.

 

 

2. The official Warhammer pronunciation guide by Phil Kelly was featured in the December 2019 issue of White Dwarf magazine (Issue 450 / Vol. 3, No. 40) under the "Worlds of Warhammer" column.

 

 

The most important one is Astra Militarum. It's Pronounced "im-PEER-ee-uhl gahrd."

 

Edited 15 hours ago by Lathe Biosas

[Arikel]

Tyr Anids: like the Norse god. Tie Ranids doesn’t sound right. 
 

Also part of the Astra Militarum being pronounced as Imperial Guard gang;)

 

As for the faux ancient roman names, I offer up month python’s life of brian as a good source.

 

Here’s a great list of ancient American names to use from a 1980’s baseball game made in Japan. Don’t limit yourself to latin/greek when there is a world’s worth of languages to mangle;)

 

 

 

 

 

Tyr Anids: like the Norse god. Tie Ranids doesn’t sound right. 
 

Also part of the Astra Militarum being pronounced as Imperial Guard gang;)

 

As for the faux ancient roman names, I offer up month python’s life of brian as a good source.

 

Here’s a great list of ancient American names to use from a 1980’s baseball game made in Japan. Don’t limit yourself to latin/greek when there is a world’s worth of languages to mangle;)

 

 

 

 

 

[Frogian]

9 hours ago, Lathe Biosas said:

1. There is a pronunciation guide in the back of the Warhammer 40,000 Character Encyclopedia for all the characters featured in the book.

 

 

2. The official Warhammer pronunciation guide by Phil Kelly was featured in the December 2019 issue of White Dwarf magazine (Issue 450 / Vol. 3, No. 40) under the "Worlds of Warhammer" column.

 

 

The most important one is Astra Militarum. It's Pronounced "im-PEER-ee-uhl gahrd."

 

 

They should really do a youtube video. 

 

We definitely got a lot of names wrong when we started in early 90s though. I'm quite bad for just scanning a name first time and not actually breaking it down though. 

Not as bad as russian literature though. I remember talking to someone about some book and they kept on going on about a character I didn't recognise. It turned out it was the protagonist and I'd just removed a syllable and couple of other letters the first time I'd read it and went with it. 

 

We also got Tatooine quite wrong as kids (called it Ta-too-nie), despite Dantooine being named in the movie

Edited 5 hours ago by Frogian

[Lathe Biosas]

They did a couple YouTube videos about pronunciation back in 2023, starting with how to pronounce "Adeptus Arbites."