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Its kind of weird though how IG vehicles and Tyranid Fleets both have the same sort of naming convention.
I get that Tyranid fleet names are based off of huge monsters, but its still pretty close.

 Galas wrote:
Until this point in time I had never realized that the imperial guard vehicles have names of relatively similar monsters(Chimera, Basilisk, Wyvern, Manticore)

Wow. And it was in front of me for years.

And SM flyers all have weather effect + bird going on.

Thunderhawk
Stormbird
Stormeagle
Stormhawk
Stormtalon
Stormraven
Land Speeder Storm/Tornado/Typhoon
Fire Raptor (that's the only one that breaks the nomenclature IMO)

But I agree with most people that isn't the OP.

This is a fantasy setting. Is fine to have both senbile wording and made up words.


If you think Warhammer has difficultd names go to learn about Lovecraft mythos. (I know the point of the names of that universe is to show how inhuman those things are but still)

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Until this point in time I had never realized that the imperial guard vehicles have names of relatively similar monsters(Chimera, Basilisk, Wyvern, Manticore)

Wow. And it was in front of me for years.

And SM flyers all have weather effect + bird going on.

Thunderhawk
Stormbird
Stormeagle
Stormhawk
Stormtalon
Stormraven
Land Speeder Storm/Tornado/Typhoon
Fire Raptor (that's the only one that breaks the nomenclature IMO)

But the Falcon is Eldar and no other eldar vehicle is named after a flying animal to my knowledge.

epronovost wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Until this point in time I had never realized that the imperial guard vehicles have names of relatively similar monsters(Chimera, Basilisk, Wyvern, Manticore)

Wow. And it was in front of me for years.

And SM flyers all have weather effect + bird going on.

Thunderhawk
Stormbird
Stormeagle
Stormhawk
Stormtalon
Stormraven
Land Speeder Storm/Tornado/Typhoon
Fire Raptor (that's the only one that breaks the nomenclature IMO)

But the Falcon is Eldar and no other eldar vehicle is named after a flying animal to my knowledge.

Hornet, I think? Serpent could also refer to a flying creature. I think the Lynx is actually one of the biggest outliers of their naming style.

 Galas wrote:
If you think Warhammer has difficultd names go to learn about Lovecraft mythos. (I know the point of the names of that universe is to show how inhuman those things are but still)

'Iä! Shub-Niggurath! The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young!'

CthuluIsSpy wrote:STALKER doesn't have aliens, it has mutants. From Earth. And they are named things like "Bloodsucker" and "Controller". The only unusual name is Snork, and that's short for Snorkel, referring to the gasmasks they wear.

Please do not attach non-wargaming images to our servers, thanks!

I don't really find this much of an issue. I don't need to know what they call themselves to kill them. Many of the names are a bit over the top and I don't bother saying the whole thing. That goes for every faction out there.

I actually re name the enemy units to remember them and at the same time mock them for their evil/alien nature. Like the stormsurge is the Squatty, as he looks like he's popping a squat.

I actually dislike the new naming conventions with AoS a good deal more. As well as some of the more silly names for imperial factions in 40k, Astra Militarum, I'm not saying that sounds too kiddy, they are the imperial guard now and always. Adeptus Astartes, nope just space marines for me. Etc.

epronovost wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Until this point in time I had never realized that the imperial guard vehicles have names of relatively similar monsters(Chimera, Basilisk, Wyvern, Manticore)

Wow. And it was in front of me for years.

And SM flyers all have weather effect + bird going on.

Thunderhawk
Stormbird
Stormeagle
Stormhawk
Stormtalon
Stormraven
Land Speeder Storm/Tornado/Typhoon
Fire Raptor (that's the only one that breaks the nomenclature IMO)

But the Falcon is Eldar and no other eldar vehicle is named after a flying animal to my knowledge.

Don't they have a forgeworld flyer called the pheonix?

Eldar naming conventions are all kind of weird. The aspects are all verbing nouns, then their vehicle range be like

BIRD! SMALLISH PREDATORY CAT! SNAKE ON A SURFBOARD! POISONOUS PLANT GHOSTPUNCHER! BEES?

the_scotsman wrote:


After all, show of hands, who just, oooh, just GRINDS THEIR GEARS that this pretentious donkey-cave JRR tolkien made all these MEANINGLESS, POINTLESS languages that add NOTHING to the story of Lord of the Rings, like, what even is the POINT of calling it "lothlorien" instead of "The Forest of the Tall and Magic Tree Folk" - what, am I going to go make up a fake dictionary with fake language and read a book about fake culture to find out what the heck that word means? NO! Words need to mean things to ME, specifically an english speaking white person! Invented languages never add depth to a literary world!

tell me your not serious?!

BrianDavion wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:


After all, show of hands, who just, oooh, just GRINDS THEIR GEARS that this pretentious donkey-cave JRR tolkien made all these MEANINGLESS, POINTLESS languages that add NOTHING to the story of Lord of the Rings, like, what even is the POINT of calling it "lothlorien" instead of "The Forest of the Tall and Magic Tree Folk" - what, am I going to go make up a fake dictionary with fake language and read a book about fake culture to find out what the heck that word means? NO! Words need to mean things to ME, specifically an english speaking white person! Invented languages never add depth to a literary world!

tell me your not serious?!

You may want to get your sarcasm detector recalibrated. If he laid it on any thicker, he'd be a Joss Whedon character.

I'm not interested in arguing about it, because this is a really stupid thing to argue about, but I'll share what I think just once, as I think people are just approaching this from different mindsets. Basically, having easily identifiable unit names and codewords is going to be better for a tabletop game, it's difficult to say otherwise that, and yeah things like Yvarna and Rvarna are on the absolute bottom end of intuitive names when it comes to raw gameplay. However this isn't just a tabletop game, it's a thriving setting and background, and forcing this lore to adhere to human naming conventions in the case of Xenos and Daemons, is going to be detrimentally restrictive in some cases. I don't see how anyone could genuinely disagree with either of these points.


For both points it's an absolute tiny issue let's be real.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

the_scotsman wrote:
Yeah, real words convey meaning, but at least in terms of subfactions, almost none of that meaning is translated through the words.

the ONLY REASON you know that the "white scars" are fast, biker space marines is because that's been jammed into your head.

The ONLY REASON you know the "Emperor's Children" are pink, flamboyant, perfection-obsessed followers of the god of excess is because that's been jammed into your head.

You read the fluff background, you digest it, and you associate it with the sub-faction.

In all instance where you're not supposed to read the fluff and associate it with the name, descriptive conventions prevail in all the factions you're pissing and moaning about.

Pulse: Carbine, Rifle, Blaster, Bomb, Cannon.

You have these guns set out in front of you, I'll bet you 9/10 people can correctly identify which one is which based on the name.

That's because all these names are meant to evoke associations, and quickly allow for identification.

Iron Warrior, Word Bearer, Emperor's Children, Death Guard, Thousand Sons, Alpha Legion.

All these names are meant to BE ASSOCIATED with a color scheme and fluff. The fluff and color scheme comes FIRST, the name association comes SECOND. That means you don't need to convey any meaning with the name, and you can freely allow it to exist in the context of the background. Not every single subfaction needs to be called "The Green Sneakies!" because that's not the direction the association needs to work, and honestly, it makes the setting feel flatter. After all, everyone loves it now that the "Space Wolves" are a bunch of yiffing hairy dogmen instead of what they used to be, a viking-coded space marine chapter with associations to the fenris iconography of the norse apocalypse myth, right?

You can convey some small meanings, as a bonus, like Hive Fleet Kraken having many tendrils, or Hive Fleet Hydra having a mutation where if you kill a tendril it splits off, but those meanings are primarily going to be again where you first read the background, then go back to the name and think "oh, that's clever".

That doesn't mean it isn't a good thing. The words Iron Warriors or Word Bearers or any of the legions you listed, don't outright tell you what to expect - you don't know Iron Warriors will be metal with hazard stripes just off the name. But when you go back after learning what the Iron Warriors are, the name makes perfect sense - it captures both their personality and their paint scheme, and all those names are somewhat associated with the entity in question once you are aware of why they were given that name, and that is really helpful at the very least for creating a memorable identity for the rules and the flavor - unlike names like Rvarna and Yvarna which still just mean nothing. There's a reason the pieces in chess are called the king and the queen even if that doesn't immediately tell you what they do, and not the "shalixthli" and the "m'carnathe" or whatever else - the names they do have tell you literally nothing until you know what they do, but once you do know, having those names in a recognisable language helps associate an identity with the ruleset attached. The relatable names do help from a gameplay perspective, even if they aren't a good restriction to place on the lore, surely we're able to acknowledge the two different aspects of 40k here?




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh look at that I fell into the trap of arguing about this

Oh look at that I fell into the trap of arguing about this

it's ok, we still love you.

Dandelion wrote:
Not sure why you're going after Tau planet names like Bork'an or Sac'ea for being meaningless, while things like Cadia or Tallarn are a thing.

I actually specifically referenced these in the OP.

While Cadia and Tallarn are indeed not immediately obvious references, they both come with useful and memorable epithets (Tallarn Desert Warriors, Cadian Shock Troops), and are both old enough to have developed decent name recognition in their own right. Much like Khorne, Nurgle, Slaanesh, and Tzeentch, in fact; if there were, say, a dozen Chaos Gods, and they weren't central to the history of multiple game lines, you can bet we'd be seeing Khorne referenced as "The Blood God" a whole lot more to help build that association.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Same as Adeptus Astartes - okay, "adeptus" tells us they're good, or specialised at something, "astartes" - what on earth is that meant to mean? Some kind of Mesopotamian goddess? So, the Adeptus Astartes must actually be devotees of the goddess Astarte?

Let's not be disingenuous. They're Space Marines. Everyone calls them Space Marines. Their codex is titled Space Marines. You don't need to translate Latin. This is like pretending to be reaaaally confused by the name Adepta Sororitas when "Sisters of Battle" is right there.

On a similar note, it doesn't really matter that the Emperor's Children is a seemingly counterintuitive name, because they're Slaaneshi psychopaths clad in pink and black BDSM power armour. The only time the name is going to come up, context will make it very clear that they're not Loyalists, and the association will build. The fact that the name is ironic is, in itself, a memorable trait. The fact that T'au Septs are pretty indistinct from one-another doesn't help their case, certainly, but having absolutely no mnemonic hooks is a death-knell to building that kind of momentum.

 SHUPPET wrote:
I'm not interested in arguing about it, because this is a really stupid thing to argue about, but I'll share what I think just once, as I think people are just approaching this from different mindsets. Basically, having easily identifiable unit names and codewords is going to be better for a tabletop game, it's difficult to say otherwise that, and yeah things like Yvarna and Rvarna are on the absolute bottom end of intuitive names when it comes to raw gameplay. However this isn't just a tabletop game, it's a thriving setting and background, and forcing this lore to adhere to human naming conventions in the case of Xenos and Daemons, is going to be detrimentally restrictive in some cases. I don't see how anyone could genuinely disagree with either of these points.

Yes? The issue I'm running into is that in most cases, the game is very good at having its cake and eating it too. T'au are the best example: yes, T'au have a complex and alien naming scheme that produces names for units, characters, and planets that don't resemble most human names, and these exist throughout the background material for the army. But these names can be translated for ease-of-use into things like "Farsight" or "Devilfish".

My view is that they should continue to do so, as they've done for the entire gameline thus far, and those examples where they've recently failed to do so are detrimental to the presentation of the factions in question: it's therefore somewhat baffling to see posters crawling out of the woodwork who apparently think it's more authentic for every datasheet title to be a face-meets-keyboard mash of vowels and apostrophes.

I did pretty much expect the other response, however, which is posters implying anyone who doesn't like the name S'mfYgmww'an is clearly just too shallow to appreciate real alien cultures.

The only reason Telemachus seems like a weird forename to most Brits/Americans/Canadians/Australians compared to Jason/Joshua is frequency of usage.

That's all this is. You're used to hearing some words and not used to hearing others.

RevlidRas wrote:

Dandelion wrote:
Not sure why you're going after Tau planet names like Bork'an or Sac'ea for being meaningless, while things like Cadia or Tallarn are a thing.

I actually specifically referenced these in the OP.

Namely, that while Cadia and Tallarn are indeed not immediately obvious references, they both come with useful and memorable epithets (Tallarn Desert Warriors, Cadian Shock Troops), and are both old enough to have developed decent name recognition in their own right.

So, your argument is that there should never be any new background, because it won't have the same baggage as the old stuff does to long-term players? (and presumably we should never have any new players, because "Cadia" or "Tallarn" will be meaningless to them.)

 AndrewGPaul wrote:

RevlidRas wrote:

Dandelion wrote:
Not sure why you're going after Tau planet names like Bork'an or Sac'ea for being meaningless, while things like Cadia or Tallarn are a thing.

I actually specifically referenced these in the OP.

Namely, that while Cadia and Tallarn are indeed not immediately obvious references, they both come with useful and memorable epithets (Tallarn Desert Warriors, Cadian Shock Troops), and are both old enough to have developed decent name recognition in their own right.

So, your argument is that there should never be any new background, because it won't have the same baggage as the old stuff does to long-term players? (and presumably we should never have any new players, because "Cadia" or "Tallarn" will be meaningless to them.)

No. If you would read, his arguments is that units should have translated names like “Devilfish” on the datasheet. The actual name can be shu doo’ da poo whatever, just not on then datasheet.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
So, your argument is that there should never be any new background, because it won't have the same baggage as the old stuff does to long-term players? (and presumably we should never have any new players, because "Cadia" or "Tallarn" will be meaningless to them.)

As a hot tip for the future: misrepresenting someone's argument generally works better if you don't directly quote it when doing so.

In this case, I've said "my argument is X and Y" and you've responded with "oh, so your argument is just Y, which is absurd". Except that everyone can see X. You have actually quoted X in your own post. I mentioned X at length in the OP.

Do you see how this somewhat blunts your rhetorical thrust?

 Excommunicatus wrote:
The only reason Telemachus seems like a weird forename to most Brits/Americans/Canadians/Australians compared to Jason/Joshua is frequency of usage.

That's all this is. You're used to hearing some words and not used to hearing others.

I have searched the whole thread out of sheer confusion, and you are the first person to so much as mention the name Telemachus. Am I missing something?

And now for something completely different...
I like to have fun with the names.
For instance, my Tau coldstar commander is named Shas'o De'koi. My ethereal is Aun'Atoo.
I had a IG company that was the Tovarin 131st 52nd 19th Emperor's Elite Meatshields. Their commander was Franz Cannonade, and his adjutants were Captains McMaim and McMaul.
My Dark Angels company commander was Captain Gluteus Flaggelus.
Why so serious?

RevlidRas wrote:

Dandelion wrote:
Not sure why you're going after Tau planet names like Bork'an or Sac'ea for being meaningless, while things like Cadia or Tallarn are a thing.

I actually specifically referenced these in the OP.

Namely, that while Cadia and Tallarn are indeed not immediately obvious references, they both come with useful and memorable epithets (Tallarn Desert Warriors, Cadian Shock Troops), and are both old enough to have developed decent name recognition in their own right. Much like Khorne, Nurgle, Slaanesh, and Tzeentch, in fact; if there were, say, a dozen Chaos Gods, and they weren't central to the history of multiple game lines, you can bet we'd be seeing Khorne referenced as "The Blood God" a whole lot more to help build that association.

I understand this isn't your whole argument, but seriously, just drop mentioning this.

We all know that almost ALL place names, and even person names, would sound janky and foreign if we hadn't been conditioned to get used to them. We think a planet called Armageddon is fine, but a planet called Omnicide is dumb, despite them being practically the same thing. Why: because Yes, we know this isn't the whole argument, but if you keep mentioning it, of course people will focus on it and argue against it.

Cadia is just as foreign as Bork'an. Pretending that one is somehow innately more memorably or descriptive than the other is simply subjective at best, and ignorant at worst.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Same as Adeptus Astartes - okay, "adeptus" tells us they're good, or specialised at something, "astartes" - what on earth is that meant to mean? Some kind of Mesopotamian goddess? So, the Adeptus Astartes must actually be devotees of the goddess Astarte?

Let's not be disingenuous. They're Space Marines. Everyone calls them Space Marines. Their codex is titled Space Marines. You don't need to translate Latin. This is like pretending to be reaaaally confused by the name Adepta Sororitas when "Sisters of Battle" is right there.

But they're also called Adeptus Astartes. The only reason that you associate Space Marine with Adeptus Astartes is simple repetition. Nothing about "Adeptus Astartes" relates to "Space Marine" at all, yet apparently they're linked - and you've not called that out.

Your OP posits that things MUST have names that evoke "the appearance and nature of these groups". How does Adeptus Astartes do this? How about Silver Skulls? Rainbow Warriors?
As with anything 40k, or even fictional, if you expose yourself to it, it becomes normalised.

When I first started 40k, if someone said "who do the Flesh Tearers fight for", I'd assume Chaos. If someone said that for the Emperor's Children, I'd assume the Imperium. However, now, even if I didn't know what they were, I could guess what the Gue'vesa are, because I've taken time to normalise a basic idea of notable Tau lexicon. Gue = human, -vesa = helper. Therefore, gue'vesa = human helper. If you kept playing 40k and normalise what "Gue'vesa" is, you'll associate it with human helpers of the Tau. After all, how would I know what a Lictor is, when Roman Lictors have nothing to do with a Tyranid bio-assassin. If we go on your logic of "must be easily identifiable", then a Lictor should really be called something like a Sicarius.

Or to stay on the Latin aspect - why are Centurions called Centurions? A Centurion is a Roman military commander in charge of a century. But 40k Centurions are just heavy weapon guys with larger carapaces. Not commanders, not especially elite, not even related to the number 100 at all. Yet, you've not called them out either.

On a similar note, it doesn't really matter that the Emperor's Children is a seemingly counterintuitive name, because they're Slaaneshi psychopaths clad in pink and black BDSM power armour. The only time the name is going to come up, context will make it very clear that they're not Loyalists, and the association will build. The fact that the name is ironic is, in itself, a memorable trait. The fact that T'au Septs are pretty indistinct from one-another doesn't help their case, certainly, but having absolutely no mnemonic hooks is a death-knell to building any kind of momentum.

They do have mnemonic hooks, or at least, ones just as good as the others. However, if you don't bother putting in effort to create associations, of course you won't make any progress.

The Emperor's Children are the perfect example of why your argument of "a name should be memorable" doesn't work - you say yourself that their name is irrelevant, but their aesthetic is, and therefore the name is only memorable because you associate it with a memorable colour scheme. The issue isn't that you can't remember their name, or think it's meaningless - it's because you can't find anything to link it to what it is.

I can recall a load of Tau septs, but because I haven't taken time to associate the names with their sept sigil or colour, I wouldn't find it easy to match them - but I still know the names of the Septs. The names aren't hard. Neither are associations. It only requires that you take a bit of time to associate one with the other, and you'll be fine.

My view is that they should continue to do so, as they've done for the entire gameline thus far, and those examples where they've recently failed to do so are detrimental to the presentation of the factions in question: it's therefore somewhat baffling to see posters crawling out of the woodwork who apparently think it's more authentic for every datasheet title to be a face-meets-keyboard mash of vowels and apostrophes.

I did pretty much expect the other response, however, which is posters implying anyone who doesn't like the name S'mfYgmww'an is clearly just too shallow to appreciate real alien cultures.

If this was your only argument, you might be onto something. But your main argument is actually about "I'm talking about weird made-up words in place of actual, memorable phrases, primarily for factions." In 40k however, MOST things are weird and made up, and only have meaning because of continued use and association with those phrases.
Cadian Shock Troopers is fundamentally the same as Bork'an Fire Warriors. Planet name, plus type of soldier.

No-one's saying that "all datasheets should be a mash of vowels and apostrophes", but that if a datasheet DOES have that, it's not stupid, and it's not impossible to make connections with it.
Pretending like you can't make those kind of associations is simply wrong.

Removed - BrookM

Cadia is just as foreign as Bork'an. Pretending that one is somehow innately more memorably or descriptive than the other is simply subjective at best, and ignorant at worst.

But that isn't true. A word that is clearly ment for your own language and has roots in it, will always be absorbed better then something that comes out of a foreign language. Cadia has a nice latin sound to it . A cadus is a bottle, and a bottle was kind of in the neck of a chaos realm bottle. Borkan on the other hand is a persian or med word, which makes it foreign in nature. And all animals, including humans, do not like foreing things. So yeah for an europans a culexus assasin aka the mosquitto has culturaly a better hidden meaning then a gnat. Even if both words describe the same thing.

Karol wrote:

Cadia is just as foreign as Bork'an. Pretending that one is somehow innately more memorably or descriptive than the other is simply subjective at best, and ignorant at worst.

But that isn't true. A word that is clearly ment for your own language and has roots in it, will always be absorbed better then something that comes out of a foreign language. Cadia has a nice latin sound to it . A cadus is a bottle, and a bottle was kind of in the neck of a chaos realm bottle. Borkan on the other hand is a persian or med word, which makes it foreign in nature. And all animals, including humans, do not like foreing things. So yeah for an europans a culexus assasin aka the mosquitto has culturaly a better hidden meaning then a gnat. Even if both words describe the same thing.

Not all Europeans understand Latin. It might look more pleasing to them that they see a word without an apostrophe, but are you SERIOUSLY saying that the mere appearance of an apostrophe is enough to render one nonsense word useless compared to another similarly nonsense word?

I've never known that a cadus is a bottle, and so your connection that Cadia is linked to the bottleneck of the Eye of Terror is completely lost on me. Maybe I'm the minority, but I've never heard of a cadus.

Bork'an doesn't sound Persian. Sounds more like an east Asian one, and even then, that's tenuous. It DOES sound foreign, but that doesn't make it's meaning any different. It just *sounds* different. That's my point - Cadia might sound more pleasing to a western audience, and Bork'an might look/sound more foreign, but regardless of their sound, they are still both ultimately MEANINGLESS without context of the 40k universe.*


*of course, assuming that someone isn't aware of what a cadus is, and considering it's a pretty niche word with few cognates in the English language, I think that's the majority of people.

RevlidRas wrote:
I have searched the whole thread out of sheer confusion, and you are the first person to so much as mention the name Telemachus. Am I missing something?

Perhaps. They're all ancient Greek names; Jason and Joshua entered common usage in the former British Empire and Telemachus didn't.

One sounds 'weird' to English-speaking ears, two don't.

Just take a look at Dark Eldar for faction names that are entirely English but convey no real meaning about the faction.

Take the Kabal of the Black Heart for instance. Kabal turns into Cabal, roughly similar meaning and connotation. But what does the term "Black Heart" mean? It's sinister and filled with malice, but no more than Prophets of Flesh, Poisoned Tongue, or Flayed Skull. It most certainly doesn't hint that those within the Kabal are master politicians and manipulators. But if you called them something like Kabal of the Insidious Schemers or something similar, it just sounds dumb.

Just because something is in English doesn't mean it's more valuable as a term than something that's not.

 onlyroad wrote:
Just because something is in English doesn't mean it's more valuable as a term than something that's not.

Even for the names that aren't particularly evocative, though, a phrase in your native language is far easier to remember and distinguish than a string of foreign syllables.

If you try asking the average a non-40K player to remember the phrases 'Kabal of the Black Heart' and 'T'au Shas'O Or'es'Ka', the former is going to be much easier to remember, despite them both being six syllables.

RevlidRas wrote:

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
So, your argument is that there should never be any new background, because it won't have the same baggage as the old stuff does to long-term players? (and presumably we should never have any new players, because "Cadia" or "Tallarn" will be meaningless to them.)

As a hot tip for the future: misrepresenting someone's argument generally works better if you don't directly quote it when doing so.

In this case, I've said "my argument is X and Y" and you've responded with "oh, so your argument is just Y, which is absurd". Except that everyone can see X. You have actually quoted X in your own post. I mentioned X at length in the OP.

Do you see how this somewhat blunts your rhetorical thrust?

Cadia and Tallarn "both come with useful and memorable epithets", but Bor'Kan and Sac'ea don't. Is it literally that? That there's no "Sac'ean Commandos" in the Tau background? You also mention in the OP that you'll accept old names being "grandfathered in", hence my reply. If old names are OK but new ones aren't, then how can you expand on the setting?

As for catchy English names, you mean Al'rahem and titles like Kasrkin (which is more awkward to pronounce than most of the Tau and Necron names; at least most of those don't have a vowel-less syllable dumped in the middle Personally, the more differet styles and implied etymologies the better. Necron names sound "Necron-y", Tau names sound different, Eldar are different again. Put them on a star map and instantly I know what's going on without any more clues. Seeing a planet referred to in one instance as "Taros" and then later as "T'Ros" tells you immediately that it's been captured by the Tau Empire from the Imperium, or implies areas of local political conflict (as is the case all across the real world, even right here in the UK). "Translating" everything into English loses lots of flavour from the setting as a whole.

You don't remember which Dynasty is which, or which Sept is where? Fair enough, it just means that area of the setting isn't your immediate interest. I mean, I can never remember which First Founding Chapter is which Legion number, and I wish all the neophytes hanging out in the Horus Heresy section of these boards would talk about "Space Wolves" and "Emperor's Children" instead of their new-fangled, made-up "VIIIth" and "IIIRd Legion" rubbish.

Not all Europeans understand Latin. It might look more pleasing to them that they see a word without an apostrophe, but are you SERIOUSLY saying that the mere appearance of an apostrophe is enough to render one nonsense word useless compared to another similarly nonsense word?

Do you know how an ą or ę sounds? Because I do, everyone slavic does. Words with those sounds are nothing unusual to us. On the other hand to everyone else west of the oder something like Brzenczyszczykiewiczównę is a babble.

Plus it doesn't have to be latin, eastern slavs have words take from greek. And romans took stuff from greek too. That is why a space ship named Bucephalus does not sound odd or wierd to anyone . On the other hand if named the space ship with the word for horse in Kosa or Zulu, most people would not get nothing out of it then the sound of the name.

But what does the term "Black Heart" mean? It's sinister and filled with malice, but no more than Prophets of Flesh, Poisoned Tongue, or Flayed Skull. It most certainly doesn't hint that those within the Kabal are master politicians and manipulators

Well that is odd then, because to me heart means the main organ. The center of something. Prophet sof flesh says in the name what the dudes and gals do. Same with flayed skull. And you have poison in your name everyone will think of assasins galor.

Just because something is in English doesn't mean it's more valuable as a term than something that's not.

But it is. As long as words have meaning and there is cultural background to it, that the majority understands then they are. On the other hand if a word requires a in depth knowladge of culture that isn't even real, but invented. Then the name is not worth more then the sound of it. Want an example? What does the word Mąciwoda say as a description of someone? unless your slavic you would not now. On the other hand something as crude as "edbursta gives everyone with basic knowladge of english what the thing is about.

Karol wrote:

 CATACLYSMUS wrote:

Why so serious?

Nowadays? Aren't people in the western europe losing jobs for using the wrong words or describing stuff in the wrong way? Seems like an odd question to ask.

Coming from 'Merica, where the phrase 'politically correct' was more or less invented, the question comes from syntax fatigue. Honestly, if we cant have a bit of silly fun with a toy soldier game, what's the point?
I thought I'd bring a bit of levity into what looks dangerously like Real Life brutally invading the gaming space.
Given that context, seemed like the RIGHT question to ask.

Some names are supposed to mean what they say - that's why things like the "Kabal of the Black Heart" are rendered in English (or whichever language the book you're reading is in) - because it's the meaning of "Black Heart" (a metaphor for evil, callousness, cruelty) that's important. Other times, the meaning of the word isn't important, but the flavour of foreigness that's desired. Sometimes he's O'Shovah, if they want to play up the non-human nature of the character, sometimes he's Farsight if they want to work with the allusions of that title.

Only this works for people from english sphear, or at least non slavic as osznowa or osnova is a wool type of decoration for easter eggs, or quite litterly a type of textile fabric composition.
So again we are going back to how recognisable a symbol in a language is.

Coming from 'Merica, where the phrase 'politically correct' was more or less invented, the question comes from syntax fatigue. Honestly, if we cant have a bit of silly fun with a toy soldier game, what's the point?
I thought I'd bring a bit of levity into what looks dangerously like Real Life brutally invading the gaming space.
Given that context, seemed like the RIGHT question to ask.

And here we encounter a cultural difference. Here everyone knows that if something is "hot" you don't ask about it, you don't talk about it, you pretend you don't know what it is or that it even exist. Not saying it is the ideal way of dealing with stuff, but here it seems to be the only thing that works. Makes my life super hard though, as I generaly have a problem with noticing what topic is "hot" and which one is not.