Today I thought I would write about how I name my armies and their characters. To me that is a big part of creating an army, as I like my armies to have a lot more history than just a bunch of random figures on a table with point values for their equipment.

I like to make up a history that fits the models,  and explain why they look the way they do and what they are doing there. For some armies it includes where they come from, how that place is governed, where it is, and other times that info is not possible to provide. Sometimes I also like to make it easy to explain why the army fight alongside another army on the same battlefield.

Let us start with Warhammer 40.000. 

The first Army worth talking about here is what I thought would be my biggest and my main army for Warhammer 40K, my loyal Space Marines. My regular Space Marine army is called The Gatekeepers. I don't really know why I chose that name, but after doing it I think it sounds like a great name for an Ultramarines successor chapter. Here I have chosen Roman and Greek names for my characters.
My chaplains and apothecaries have Greek names, while my captains and characters have Roman names (usually put together from Roman Emperors). My Chapter Master is called Otho Vitellius and the Gatekeepers have their home world of Luminus Prime. The planet got its name after some planets I saw on an old map of the known universe where they had the Luminus Cluster and I used Prime because that indicates it is the first or the biggest planet in a system.

I also have a Space Marine army of the Deathwatch. They share the monastery with the Sisters of Silence (Sisters of the Shield) that is a small army I have (just a few units really).
I named the fortress Alamo dé Bexar and the chapter master (Watch master) is named Barret Travis. This is from 1836 when Texas got to be an independent country and  broke away from the rule of Mexico. The Alamo was a little mission that they fortified and where all defenders were killed by General Santa Ana and his soldiers. Today the ruins of the mission is an important part of the city of San Antonio and is a tourist attraction (and yes, I've been there). This is the place where among others Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie died. Travis was the commander during the siege and battle of The Alamo, so I found it fitting to use his name for my Watch Master. The Deathwatch is a special kind of army as it consist of marines from other chapters, so I have decided to use names for the characters that sound like the names Games Workshop uses for the same Chapters. 

I also have a Chaos Space Marine army, and they are called The Knights of Oblivion. They used to be loyal to the Empire but during the Horus Heresy they fell to the other side. Their Chapter Master is Arch-Commodore Fallstaff. Arch-Commodore is a named that was used for leaders of the Space Marine legoins before there were split up in to chapters and the leaders became Chapter Masters, so I found that title fitting for an old Chapter. All characters here will be named after characters in Shakespeare plays as I think Chaos characters often have dramatic names.

My Astra Militarum army have all their characters named after officers in the American Civil War (mostly high ranking officers like colonels or generals).
I have used personnel from both sides of the conflict and I have named all my officers and special characters. There are a few that has gotten other names, but that is to show that they originally came from regiments that has been assimilated in to the army after they became too small to live on by themselves.
I have named the army The Walpurgian 3rd. 3 was chosen to show that the planetary system have sent large armies to fight for the Imperium before, and Walpurgia was chosen because I found out that in Sweden they light bonfires to remember a Swedish Catholic saint on the night between April 30th and May 1st. Her name in Swedish is Valborg, but in  English her name is Walpurgis. The General of the entire army of the Walpurgian 3rd are Major General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard

My Adeptus Mechanicus army have their leaders named after famous explorers throughout history. They are part of the vast exploratory fleets that look for old artefacts and lost technology, and the leader of the entire fleet is Arch Magos deSousa, and the ship my forces belong to is the big exploratory vessel Gloria Inveneris. The commander of this ship, and with that the commander of my force called Cohort 9-1 Alpha is Magos Explorator de Orellana. 

My Necron army has yet to be named, but I am thinking about using some ancient Chinese Dynasty as a basis for their names.

The final 40K army that I have plans to name are my Orks. They Orks themselves are all named after actors and movie charcters. The Big Mek that is in charge of all the vehicles and war machines are named Big Mek Gyvver (McGyver) and one of the war bosses is Hazza Hof (Da Hof) (after David Hasselhof) and his pet squig Hoobie. I have not found the name for my big warboss yet, originally that was Hazza Hof as he was a big ork warboss (Grukk Facerippa), but then we got a new and plastic version of Ghazghkull Thraka and I knew I had to have him as my ultimate warboss. 

I also have a small army with Adeptus Custodes, the before mentioned Sisters of Silence, a small army of Sisters of Battle and an army of Genestealer Cultists but I have not yet decided how to name them.

For Age of Sigmar I have the following armies:

My Sylvaneth army is called The Ironroot Glade, and it is lead by Quercus Petraera. This is the Latin name for Silver Oak, and I will name all characters in this army after Latin names for trees and bushes. Since this is an army of trees I find it only fitting that they have tree names, and it's much better to be called Quercus than Oak.

I have always loved the Dwarfs, and I have lots of them, though most of them is still on sprues. I want to have a huge Dwarf army, and even though I can't play them as that anymore (at least not in a regular game of Age of Sigmar) I just want to have loads of them and they need their own back story. I can use some of them in a Cities of Sigmar army, but then I will need some Imperial troops to go along with them. I also have some Bretonnian units that I like to use as substitutes for the Imperial units in such an army. The Dwarf contingent will then have a leader called the Low King, and his name is Thorir Thorgrimsson. Thorir is an Icelanic name, and as so happens is the first name of the coach of the female National handball team here in Norway. He isn't the tallest man I know, so I thought it would be cool to make him a Dwarf king. The last name I just picked. For English speaking people it is possible to pronounce and it sounds like a proper Dwarf name. All characters in this army will have names that sound like this, Icelandic or old Norse names.

I also have an army of Kharadron Overlords, they are sort of steampunk dwarfs, and I plan to use the same kind of names for them as they are Dwarfs too. I will not use a known clan but make up my own backstory and make them my own, just like I do with my Dwarfs. Originally I also had an army of Fyreslayers, but I decided I had to choose between Kharadron and Fyreslayers and the Fyreslayers lost. I might buy a unit or two though to use as Slayers in my dwarf army as the old metal slayers are really expensive on the used market. But I am trying to scavenge some slayers here and there as they really have a special look to them that I like, and that fits very well with the rest of my army.

When starting a dwarf army back in the days (I think I started buying dwarfs as my second box of Games Workshop minis ever, and I haven't stopped since) I felt I also needed to have someone they could fight against. Back in those days dwarfs had two natural enemies, and that was Night Goblins and Skaven. I didn't care that much for painting all the fur of the Skaven rat-people, so I went for Night Goblins as they had capes and hoods and that ment not so much skin to paint. They are now the backbone of my Gloomspite Gitz army.
The Gloomspite Gitz is an army book that has come out just about a year ago, and it is perfect for me. When I started buying Night Goblins and other units from what was then known as the Orcs and Goblins range I was dead set on not having any Orcs in the army as I bought a unit of Black Orcs that was the meanest and badest Orcs back in the days. But when I assembled them they just looked like freaks with severe back-problems and they all leaned freakishly forward. So I said I wanted to have a Goblin warlord instead and started to buy Goblins. But you can never win a fight only with Goblins (or Grots as they are re-named to now) so I had to have some mercenaries. I bought two Giants, built one, and also got some River Trolls. With the Glomspite Gitz this is now a legal army, where the Grots can have trolls, giants and other monsters as allies so I plan to slowly bring home my models and get them on modern bases and ready for use in the game. The characters will be named after British names for mushrooms or words related to this. Imagine a shaman called Psilocybin, and "heroes" like Wood Mulberry, Stump Puffball, Yellow Stainer and Moss Oysterling just to mention a few. And in 2020 Games Workshop released yet another big army (big is the operative word here) called Sons of Behemat.

Sons of Behemat are giants (now called Gargants), and their big brothers the Mega-Gargants. Some  of them can go to war as mercenaries in my Gloomspite Gitz army, ut they can also be fileded in full force as an army of their own. I am currently reading their rules and trying to find out how many Gargants I need to field to have a legal army. So far I have two Mega-Gargants and two normal Gargants, but I want to get a few more of the normal ones to be followers of their big brethren and to do some fun conversions like giving one of them a peg leg. Like the Gloomspite Gitz they will have names after British words for mushrooms.

I also have quite a lot of Chaos models, and I want to have a big Chaos unlimited army, but at the moment I am not sure that this is even possible (it used to be in Warhammer Fantasy, and might come back). But I haven't decided how to name the characters in this army yet. But I need to finish some of the many models I have started for the army. And I also have Ogors, the big brutes from the North that I would like to make in to an army, I have a big box of models to assemble so I can build quite an army.