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Hello out there in internet land.

When coming up with names for my Space Marines as well as inspired names for my squads and vehicles I tend to draw a blank.

What are your favorite/most effective methods for generating solid names for use with your army units and characters?

Latin or Greek names are good to use. Most of my chapters names where chosen for the meaning of the word, which is handy if you want to remember a particular characters personality and have lots of them.

Or you could always try a 40k name generator. I think there's one kicking around here somewhere.

Depends on the culture of the SM chapter you are doing, if your doing a codex chapter that is Ultramarines or one of their successors Greek or Latin names would be great. If they're a Nordic themed chapter or a Space Wolves successor go for names like Bjorn or Sven etc. Imperial fists and Black Templars; Germanic names like Luther would be pretty cool.

Squads seem to be named after their Sergeant, as a general rule.

But like any general rule, you can obviously bend or break it.

i use famous literature and authors. you can go the Shakespeare route or Greek Methology (i have a particular bend towards characters from the Iliad).

My Chaos Marines are a renegade chapter from Ultramarine bloodstock. As such many of the surviving commanders have Latin names, although new upstarts can have more chaosy names.

But I try to keep them all Latin because it sounds cool and space marines are basically super powered Roman legions after all.

black crusade suggests using names of historical and past traitors for CSMs. certinly not a hard core rule, but "the dread chaos Lord, Benidict" has a certin degree of amusement to it

The name must fit the tank I believe. I borrow heavily from Norse, Persian, and Greco-Roman imagery. Most of my vehicles are named after my favorite literary/quasi-historical characters, provided the tank matches their attributes. For example, all of my Chimeras, being transports, are named after famous war horses, such as Bucephalus and Raksh, whereas my battle tanks, being pillars of brute strength and leading the armored company are typically named after mighty heroes: Beowulf, Mars, Hercules, etc. My favorite names thus far are Max and Moritz, my two Hellhounds, because I find their use as trolling tanks very appropriate. Find your source and inspiration and run with it!

Thanks for input and inspiration guys!