Well, you could go for the hard way with actual Tau words, or you could go the easy way and just pick a couple of english words and squish them together, like Windblade, Steadyhand, or Jellybean.

The third option is just make something that sounds Tau'ish, since just because it's not in the Tau list of words doesn't mean it shouldn't be a tau word.

ie. Thys'u Nah'du Sai Lyva (the third, esq.)

 

I give my Tau characters Japanese mythical or historical names, I like the way they sound and you can even pick names to match their fighting style.

My commander is called Sun Wukong, (in Japanese mythology he is the monkey king). He is fast, hard hitting and agile, whch fits the Tau commanders way of fighting nicely.

 

So, is this also how codenames such as "Deathrain" and "Fireknife" were introduced. (Just wondering cause that would mean its possible to make up hundreds of names purely on the purpose of the model)

 

Quite true.

I went pretty simple; my Tau commander's name in short form is El'Vis. :act-up:

 

Heh heh! Nice one, PW!

Last weekend I played in a 30k-a-side Tau vs IG/SM game. The IG overall commander's name was Feldmarschall Rimmel (the IG player is a military history fanatic!), so we decided that the Tau supreme commander should be Shas'O Vy'Koun'Tmon'Go'Mur'I.

In short: make up your own names for your commanders in a Tau-like fashion, or find a good Tau lexicon and make up something using actual Tau vocabulary. A Google search will net you a few places.

E.

 

My Tau army are members of da WU-TANG CLAN!!!!

 

Shas'O R'za? :sarcastic:

 

You could also borrow other people's alien languages. I personally use Stargate Goa’uldeze ever since I noticed that O’shovah is like shol’va (which interestingly enough translates into traitor).

 

There are actually threads on this sight that give a tau language dynamics and a dictionary which I thought was geeky cool. What I have figured out is that Tau names actually translate back into the English language dislexically. Like Shovah (Farsight), sho is actually the term for sight, and vah means far so in English it is sight far,. Best way to come up with a name for Tau is to think like a barbarian and come up with a name like; Sword Breaker, Skull Smasher, Blood Runner, Cold Fountain, Cold Stare, 3 Skulls, Wind Blighter, Snake whipper, Leg Severer, Headache maker. As you can see as serious or stupid as you want and if you find the actual Tau translation for it just reverse the words, add the title and you;ll be fine.

 

There are actually threads on this sight that give a tau language dynamics and a dictionary which I thought was geeky cool.

Geeky cool! mmm don't know about the cool. We have to be careful here, 40K is seen (wrongly or rightly :dont-know:: ) as a refuge for geeks as it is, if anyone found it we learned the races languages we would be seen being on a par with those Klingon speaking Trekkie nerds. :freaked-out: Seriously though just make up a Tau sounding name, as long as you like it what does it matter if its not geek accurate.

 

No yeah obviously have fun with it first. The reason I pointed out the other cool stuff if you wanted to go deeper into the back story and stuff. I got interested because of my curiousity in the word etamology of the language and quite frankly I wanted to know how to come up with a proper name. But thats about where my geekiness toward the Tau go.

 

well im with Cym, i realy like to know the meaty goodness of the background and language is a great starting place, also ive been mulling over the creation of a comic strip about some T'au.

TO THE INTAR WEBS I GO! for more language =D, also good luck on finding a name!

 

well im with Cym, i realy like to know the meaty goodness of the background and language is a great starting place, also ive been mulling over the creation of a comic strip about some T'au.

Thanks, Bereau, I gave you some rep, anyone willing to try and produce a Tau comic deserves some. Also attached is the Tau Dictionary I have so far hope it helps, I found the one here on the forums to be a little loose with their translations. Ok so I guess the site didn
't want me to upload them. Bereau if you want the dictionary i put together so far just let me know what email kyou would like me to send it to.:soldier:

 

well, i don't know about the tau language and such.

however, to me these little space commies are soo into their armour suits that it seems that some obscure anime name is in order, like radical edward. but it's good to see that there is a loose sort of convention for when this is going to wear thin on me, but I doubt it will.

 

Al lot of people go the anime name route. I tend to shy away from it, firstly since it strengthens the stereotype of Tau players being weeaboos. For those of you who don't know what that means, This is from urban dictionary:

A Weeaboo is:

Someone who is obsessed with Japan/Japanese Culture/Anime, etc. and attempts to act as if they were Japanese, even though they're far from it. They use Japanese words but usually end up pronouncing them wrong and sounding like total a**holes. You can find alot of these f****ts clogging up the forums of Gaia Online, hanging out in the international aisle of the supermarket, or crowding the manga section of your local bookstore.

So yeah, there is that, but I also always saw Tau as Chinese-inspired, while anime is almost universally Japanese.

Because of this, I do tend to stick with the compound word format, (Fireknife, Deathrain, Farsight, Shadowsun, Grumblesword, Nogginblast, etc)

 

lol, i must say that using a different language would be going to far for me since I have rather poor linguistic skills in english, let alone a language as different as one with an asian origin.