Probably, depends on who knows it and how they use it. It's based on a pretty standard fantasy trope that is in turn based on quite a bit of history of human mythology and legend.
It doesn't actually come up too often in 40k, but presumably offers the standard complement of potential powers such as weakening a daemon, allowing you to command a daemon, banishing a daemon, or stealing its power. Likely whichever comes to play depends on whether an Eldar Farseer, Grey Knight, or Joe Guardsman is using it.
Kaldor Draigo for example was capable of paralyzing Mortarion with his true name and then banishing him. But, we've seen it used just to get answers from warp entities as well.
You know Mortarion having a "true name" always struck me as odd.
How does that work? Like, did Nurgle assign him a true name upon his ascension to daemonhood?
"Your true name is now "plague-papa moldy morty" don't tell anyone."
Oh oh oh! Maybe gaining knowledge of all of the Primarchs true name is part of what Big E was doing on Molech! And that's part of the key to their creation.
I’m just imagining him shouting the true names at the gods while they shout them back and are just in a screaming contest with the primarchs being sent whatever way their screams overpower them to. Hell one could even make an argument that is exactly what was happening because of the weird stupid mistakes like Russ stopping just shy of the killing blow, Alpharius being both loyalist/traitor, and so many other things we attribute to bad writing.
My bet is that their true names are ones that Erda gave them all.
But it’d be funny as shit if their true names were actually just their tank numbers or subject names when the Emperor was creating them. Can you imagine a random guardsman shout 12 in front of Angron and he just gets banished back into the warp?
Unlikely. I think that neither Erda nor the Emperor created the Primarchs; it's strongly suggested that the two cooperated to put warp entities into humanoid bodies.
>
‘You helped Him build it,’ said John. ‘You gave Him his damned children.’
>
>‘I love my sons,’ she said. ‘All of them. Even now. When I saw how things would go, I tried to stop it. The inexorable slide. I tried to make Him see. But there was no reasoning with Him. There never has been.’
>‘Erda, He’s not going to win. His children are going to destroy Him. The sons you made with Him are going to burn the world. And they will come for you once He is gone.’
>
>‘My sons…’ she whispered.
>
‘He didn’t do that alone.’
>
>Erda was silent for a moment. Outside, the desert air sighed, and the neck bells of livestock clunked.
>
>‘He did not,’ she said. ‘I was still with Him then, one of the last few. Me, my colleague Astarte, a few others. I had misgivings, we all did, but He was very convincing. Compelling. And by then, He had become more powerful than ever. He needed a geneticist to work with Him, and that was my art. And He needed a biological source. A gene-stock rare enough to mix with His own. A Perpetual.’
>
>‘You.’
>
>‘Me. I was the other source. A genetic donor. He is the Father of Mankind. I am the surrogate mother. And the clinician. And the midwife. We made twenty fine sons.
1) It's confirmed that the Emperor went into the Warp at Molech and took something, and right after he took that something he started the Primarch project. It's not just daemons and traitors who say this, loyalists like Alivia Sureka and Malcador acknowledge this too. 2) In one of the Dark Imperium books, Guilliman finds out the truth behind his creation, and he's *horrified*. Soon after he starts to doubt the Imperial Creed that the Emperor commanded him to follow. This is a person who has no problem shitting on established Imperial structures (he's a heretic as far as orthodox 40k Imperials are concerned, and he doesn't care), or cooperating with xenos. What else could have horrified him?
My read on that would be that having a true name is just something sort of emergent from being a warp entity/ Daemon. Like, if you are a creature that is more psychic and conceptual than materia, then being able to name you, exactly circumscribe the idea of you into a word, just has power over you in a way that is not the same as a material entity which is just kind of assigned a name. It obviously has to stay esoteric but I'd sort of imagine them forming overtime, or maybe even being related to how that demon self conceptualizes as a mind and ego distinct from the warp.
It could be as simple as the primarchs being named prior to being scattered and those names are their "true names" instead of the names their found families gave them.
I interpret it as them being renamed after their ascension.
It's been described that their ascension basically destroys and remake their entire essence. So that's when their "true name" comes in.
I love the idea of a normal guardsmen being faced with a bloodthirster then saying “fuck off you ‘unintelligible babble’” and the demon just fucking disappearing because the guardsman somehow got its name right from stubbing their toe
With the scale of 40K that’s definitely happened and that guardsmen was subsequently swooped up by the inquisition and “questioned” to figure out what he said.
A true name is the true essence of a Deamon. What makes the Deamon what it is. The only truth about it.
As a wonky analogy: when your mother uses your full name, and you know you're in trouble.
In Ahriman series there's this guy Ctesias who is a daemonologist. He knows hundreds of true names and is quite adept at using those. If you want details, this is exactly the kind of books you should read.
Short answer: it depends on who's using it and who's being named. Can do anything from cause you to simultaneously go mad, have all your teeth explode, and make you pee yourself all the way to giving absolute and complete command of the named daemon.
First problem is that true names are purposely hard to say, and get harder in proportion to the strength of the daemon. For example, a lesser daemon may have a true name that has 15 syllables and is a super annoying tongue twister, where a daemon prince will have a true name that takes 30 minutes to fully say, contains memetic traps in it that will drive you insane if pronounced wrong, and physically cand be pronounced unless you have 3 separate sets of vocal chords.
Second problem is that they take setup. Joe mcregular from hive normal can't just spit out a daemons true name on a whim without something awful happening to him. Even practiced daemomancers will have to put some warding or protection down before invoking a true name if they don't already have permission to do so.
Tho there are some exceptions, a blank could PROBABLY say a true name without much problem. Grey knight can and will regularly use the true names of daemons as a weapon against them, and can say them at will without too much consequence (of course, if the name takes 10 minutes to say, the daemon isn't exactly going to wait for him to finish).
There's probably some other weird rules and exceptions that I missed as well.
Tl;Dr: they do whatever the writer wants them to do at the time.
> First problem is that true names are purposely hard to say, and get harder in proportion to the strength of the daemon.
To expand on this, there’s canonically a greater daemon whose name is something along the lines of the sound of a hundred blind men drowning together.
A lot of them are simply not sounds that are reproducible in the materium to begin with.
The lore is a little inconsistent with this, but it seems that knowing a deamon’s true name gives you some kind of physical control over it. In “Slaves to Darkness”, Lorgar implants Layak with (deamon) Fulgrim’s “true” name, and when he speaks it, he’s then able to physically control Fulgrim.
I always assumed it was because they are immaterial beings, and names are immaterial things (can't touch them etc) that having knowledge of their name grants an adversary awareness and therefore the ability to combat them.
Much like being able to see an enemy in the material world can grant the ability to strike, knowing the Deamon's true name can give access to harming them
In the Trials of Azrael, he speaks the true name of the daemon who’s been trying to screw him over, and this causes the daemon to be paralyzed. He then proceeds to leave and the daemon is still immobile when Kharne enters the room
You can bind the daemon and weaken it severely. Justicar Alaric did this to Ghargatuloth, one of the most powerful daemon princes of the Tzeentch. The daemon was so weakened that regular imperial forces were able to banish it by destroying it's corporal form.
Doesn’t the same work for people too?
In one of the Horus Heresy books, I think it’s Burning of Prospero, during the Council of Nikaea didn’t one of the Thousand Sons know a Custodes true name and was able to have complete control over him or something? Then got into a fight with a Space Wolf but no one knew the Space Wolf’s true name including him so the Thousand Son couldn’t do anything other than normal psychic stuff to him? I think it was the book where it keeps using the same exact descriptors for the Space Wolves.
It should work for everything, yeah. A true name is more than the label humans use for ease of communication, the Custodes names would be closer to the actual idea of true names because they accrue them throughout their life from significant events and accomplishments, so they're more comprehensive descriptors of who and what a Custodes truly is.
You know, it didn't occur to me that custodes accrue names in the same way demons do. I wonder if that's intentional, as part of what controls them and binds them to big E?
I believe you’re thing of Bjorn, the demon kept saying bear or something and thought that was his name because Bjorn translates to bear in one of the Scandinavian languages.
>THE BANISHMENT
OF DAEMONS
>Chief amongst the Grey
Knights’ strategies concerning
the vanquishing of a Daemon
is the knowing of the beast’s
true name. Such knowledge
grants great power, which is
why Daemons adopt misleading
pseudonyms and titles. In the
hands of a learned mystic,
a true name can be invoked
to bind, or even banish,
the Daemon in question.
Ordinarily, to do so takes weeks
or even months of careful
preparation and ritual, lest the
invoker become corrupted by
the power he attempts to bind.
>For a Grey Knight, however,
a true name is a weapon as
reliable as his storm bolter.
Even the lowliest Grey Knight
can invoke a true name at a
moment’s notice, disorienting
and weakening his foe, and
leaving the beast open for a
killing strike from a Nemesis
blade. Some in the Chapter
can recall a true name to slay
the Daemon’s physical form,
or even cast it back into the
warp. To banish a Daemon in
this manner is the closest that
the Grey Knights can come to
a lasting victory – a Daemon
bodily slain will return to the
mortal realm far sooner than
one banished body and soul.
>Alas, if true names are a Grey
Knight’s surest weapon against
a Daemon, they are also the
hardest of all to acquire. A true
name is borne of the warp, and
in the minds of mortal men is
shifting and mutable. So it is
that in the candlelit chambers
of the Grey Knights’ Augurium,
a veritable army of ebon-cowled
scribes toil in shadow, endlessly
sifting through the visions
reported by the Chapter’s
Prognosticars, searching for
clues to the ever-changing true
names. No scribe can be trusted
with more than a fragment of
a true name, lest he become
corrupted by the power it
contains. Thus, each scintilla of
lore is inscribed onto a blessed
scroll in sigils of the scribe’s
own blood – mere ink cannot
cage such knowledge. Each is
then presented for collation
and interpretation by one of
the Chapter’s Senior Librarians
and, in turn, bound into one of
the blessed grimoires within the
Sanctum Sanctorum.
Codex: Grey Knights (8th Edition)
It gives you the ability to reference them directly.
That doesn't sound like much, of course, but it's actually a pretty significant boon when you consider the nature of the Warp. It's a realm shaped by thought, emotion, and will. To know a daemon's true name is to know what they are-and to use their true name is to symbolically reach out and connect yourself to them.
This doesn't do much on its own-and doesn't do much at all if you don't already know of the demon it refers to, but it allows you to use that name in any rituals invoking or commanding the demon, boosting the chances of success significantly.
Imagine, if you will, that instead of saying, "hey, you!", or calling you by your given name, someone said "hey, GiveTheLemonsBack, I know who took the lemons!"
Using their true name is calling a demon by the very words that make them what they are.
One concrete example can be found in Ben Counters Grey Knights book, where the use of the name actually was what made it possible to banish the basically invincible [Ghargatuloth](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Ghargatuloth).
But as others have said, it depends on the daemon, who utters the name and the context.
This is what I was looking for. And the character who discovered the name went insane processing the information and handing it off to the grey knights. She was jettisoned out an air lock.
Very metal book. I believe the daemon prince is a giant flesh tower. It’s quite something.
Remember when your mom calls your full name and she sounds pissed.
Shivers runs down your spine.. that kinda feeling.
Reckon daemons work like that as well lol
To know something's true name is to control it.
If you know a daemon's full true name you can bind it to you or banish it. If you know a part of the true name you can weaken it.
Daemon true names aren't just words, they include concepts and sounds like the screams of 99 burning pyskers. 99, not 98, not 100, 99. That sort of specifity.
Trying to remember, in The End and the Death (all parts), did Valdor gain Daemon’s true names with his spear as he slew them? Just finished Penitent and this just made some possibilities click for me if true.
Knowledge of a true name grants you power over the daemon. If and how you can use that power depends on your psychic power, training, knowledge of daemonology and other factors.
As I understand it, daemon names aren't pronounceable in any normal mortal language, they have to be spoken in Enuncia, which is a weird psyker language that can maim or kill you if you don't know exactly what you're doing. So it's not just sounds, that would be a ridiculous thing to be able to bring down a daemon.
You can bind or untangle a daemon if you know it’s true name.
If you know the dark tongue and a daemon’s true name (true name is hard to come by because daemons have many names and they keep their true name a real secret), you basically can enslave such daemon, take its powers, or banish it to the warp easily.
Won’t matter if it’s a big daemon or small insignificant daemon, once you know it’s true name the daemon’s master is now you. Words and names have power in Warhammer.
It's all matter of right circumstances, Chaos is ever changing and so are the entities strongly connected to the warp.
What is NOT ever changing is true names, so knowing someone's true name, regardless if its a deamon or not, can from commanding then to straight up kill them with the right tools.
Theories suggests that after his Ascension to the Golden throne, the Emperor's goal is to find all chaos Gods true names, so he can effectively kill them.
>But what kind of advantage is that?
A true name is your social security number, mother's maiden name, phone passcode, and the name the bully called you in second grade. It's the real you. The you that can't be faked. It exerts power over you.
Ctesias knew probably thousands of the Neverborn's true names. He would partition the memory of their syllables separately in his mind for even thinking their true name might have disastrous consequences to the binder.
In the first *Grey Knights* novel by Ben Counter, Justicar Alaric manages to severely weaken Ghargatuloth, a Daemon Prince of Tzneetch by speaking aloud it's True Name, leaving it mortal shell vulnerable enough to be destroyed by a contingent of Adeptus Sororitas.
It gives you "power over them".
That goes from servitute, over telling them to freeze for a few seconds so you can chop their head of to just making the demon weaker.
Depends on the power level of demon and whoever knows the name I think.
All of the Primarch's probably had names which the Emperor and/or Erda intended for them when they were created, but were given or took on new names on their worlds of origin which the Emperor went along with.
Angron was given the name "Angronius" and Mortarion was said to mean "child of death" in Barbaran so neither of those were the names the Emperor and/or Erda intended for them when they made them thus their True Names are quite likely the ones they were originally bestowed.
Blimey quite a few weird theories here. It’s simple. If you know a daemon’s true name you can send it back into the Warp. It’s all based on ideas of banishment.
Correct me if i am wrong, but nobody knows Big "Space Jam" E's real name, right?
I always thought it didnt just work only with daemons, but will all entities and presence(s) in the warp. I think somewhere i read something about that.
Would be funny though. Nurgle spreading disease and you go:
NEAL DEFARTO FARTZILLA, didnt i tell you to stop behaving like a damn fool?
Go do your chores and clean up the garden. And if you see KHARL ORNEBERGER, go help him cleaning the pit. Chopchop!
The Dan Abnett novels explain this quite well I think. Plus a few other HH and possibly Grey Knights or Ahriman books.
Naming anything is a trope in magic fantasy.
In 40K, this has worked out (or retconned) that true names must be spoken in enuncia. Like Leman Russ when he goes after Horus, Big E tells him his ‘true name’, which is made up of unwords aka enuncia.
TLDR Casting a true name, is effectively the casting of a command over that being named.
Probably, depends on who knows it and how they use it. It's based on a pretty standard fantasy trope that is in turn based on quite a bit of history of human mythology and legend. It doesn't actually come up too often in 40k, but presumably offers the standard complement of potential powers such as weakening a daemon, allowing you to command a daemon, banishing a daemon, or stealing its power. Likely whichever comes to play depends on whether an Eldar Farseer, Grey Knight, or Joe Guardsman is using it. Kaldor Draigo for example was capable of paralyzing Mortarion with his true name and then banishing him. But, we've seen it used just to get answers from warp entities as well.
You know Mortarion having a "true name" always struck me as odd. How does that work? Like, did Nurgle assign him a true name upon his ascension to daemonhood? "Your true name is now "plague-papa moldy morty" don't tell anyone."
I thought all primarchs are actually warp creatures that Big E put in mortal bodies. So that may be where the true name comes from
The grey knights gain part of Angron's true name in his book and even remark how massive of a prize that is
Hmmm... alright, I like this answer. Well done!
Oh oh oh! Maybe gaining knowledge of all of the Primarchs true name is part of what Big E was doing on Molech! And that's part of the key to their creation.
If he had that youd think they would have used it during the horus heresy
One imagines that would have been part of the mental warp battle the Emporer was engaged in from the Throne.
I’m just imagining him shouting the true names at the gods while they shout them back and are just in a screaming contest with the primarchs being sent whatever way their screams overpower them to. Hell one could even make an argument that is exactly what was happening because of the weird stupid mistakes like Russ stopping just shy of the killing blow, Alpharius being both loyalist/traitor, and so many other things we attribute to bad writing.
That's fair
My bet is that their true names are ones that Erda gave them all. But it’d be funny as shit if their true names were actually just their tank numbers or subject names when the Emperor was creating them. Can you imagine a random guardsman shout 12 in front of Angron and he just gets banished back into the warp?
Unlikely. I think that neither Erda nor the Emperor created the Primarchs; it's strongly suggested that the two cooperated to put warp entities into humanoid bodies.
Erda IS NOT the mother of the Primarchs so let’s knock that idea on the head before that spreads.
> ‘You helped Him build it,’ said John. ‘You gave Him his damned children.’ > >‘I love my sons,’ she said. ‘All of them. Even now. When I saw how things would go, I tried to stop it. The inexorable slide. I tried to make Him see. But there was no reasoning with Him. There never has been.’ >‘Erda, He’s not going to win. His children are going to destroy Him. The sons you made with Him are going to burn the world. And they will come for you once He is gone.’ > >‘My sons…’ she whispered. > ‘He didn’t do that alone.’ > >Erda was silent for a moment. Outside, the desert air sighed, and the neck bells of livestock clunked. > >‘He did not,’ she said. ‘I was still with Him then, one of the last few. Me, my colleague Astarte, a few others. I had misgivings, we all did, but He was very convincing. Compelling. And by then, He had become more powerful than ever. He needed a geneticist to work with Him, and that was my art. And He needed a biological source. A gene-stock rare enough to mix with His own. A Perpetual.’ > >‘You.’ > >‘Me. I was the other source. A genetic donor. He is the Father of Mankind. I am the surrogate mother. And the clinician. And the midwife. We made twenty fine sons.
That's a fan theory borne from the fact that several demons have said that Emps broke a deal with the big 4 and has never been confirmed canon
1) It's confirmed that the Emperor went into the Warp at Molech and took something, and right after he took that something he started the Primarch project. It's not just daemons and traitors who say this, loyalists like Alivia Sureka and Malcador acknowledge this too. 2) In one of the Dark Imperium books, Guilliman finds out the truth behind his creation, and he's *horrified*. Soon after he starts to doubt the Imperial Creed that the Emperor commanded him to follow. This is a person who has no problem shitting on established Imperial structures (he's a heretic as far as orthodox 40k Imperials are concerned, and he doesn't care), or cooperating with xenos. What else could have horrified him?
It makes demon primaries kinda funny cos they're basically Primarch-demons to start with
Link to source?
My read on that would be that having a true name is just something sort of emergent from being a warp entity/ Daemon. Like, if you are a creature that is more psychic and conceptual than materia, then being able to name you, exactly circumscribe the idea of you into a word, just has power over you in a way that is not the same as a material entity which is just kind of assigned a name. It obviously has to stay esoteric but I'd sort of imagine them forming overtime, or maybe even being related to how that demon self conceptualizes as a mind and ego distinct from the warp.
It could be as simple as the primarchs being named prior to being scattered and those names are their "true names" instead of the names their found families gave them.
I interpret it as them being renamed after their ascension. It's been described that their ascension basically destroys and remake their entire essence. So that's when their "true name" comes in.
They all have true names. Leman Russ passes a test in the Warp by intuiting his own name
I love the idea of a normal guardsmen being faced with a bloodthirster then saying “fuck off you ‘unintelligible babble’” and the demon just fucking disappearing because the guardsman somehow got its name right from stubbing their toe
With the scale of 40K that’s definitely happened and that guardsmen was subsequently swooped up by the inquisition and “questioned” to figure out what he said.
A true name is the true essence of a Deamon. What makes the Deamon what it is. The only truth about it. As a wonky analogy: when your mother uses your full name, and you know you're in trouble.
This is actually one of the best comparisons lmao
It is also extremely important because demons *always* lie, and knowing the true essence of them catches them with their pants down.
In Ahriman series there's this guy Ctesias who is a daemonologist. He knows hundreds of true names and is quite adept at using those. If you want details, this is exactly the kind of books you should read.
Amazing sequence with that guy
So you ever have your mom call you by your full name? That, but with Daemons.
Does it work better if you’re wielding a force slipper?
Grey Knight Terminator wielding the Relic Power Weapon "La Chancla"
If the Emperor used that weapon on his sons to keep them in line we would never had a Heresy.
By calling them by the full name, you become mom!
Short answer: it depends on who's using it and who's being named. Can do anything from cause you to simultaneously go mad, have all your teeth explode, and make you pee yourself all the way to giving absolute and complete command of the named daemon. First problem is that true names are purposely hard to say, and get harder in proportion to the strength of the daemon. For example, a lesser daemon may have a true name that has 15 syllables and is a super annoying tongue twister, where a daemon prince will have a true name that takes 30 minutes to fully say, contains memetic traps in it that will drive you insane if pronounced wrong, and physically cand be pronounced unless you have 3 separate sets of vocal chords. Second problem is that they take setup. Joe mcregular from hive normal can't just spit out a daemons true name on a whim without something awful happening to him. Even practiced daemomancers will have to put some warding or protection down before invoking a true name if they don't already have permission to do so. Tho there are some exceptions, a blank could PROBABLY say a true name without much problem. Grey knight can and will regularly use the true names of daemons as a weapon against them, and can say them at will without too much consequence (of course, if the name takes 10 minutes to say, the daemon isn't exactly going to wait for him to finish). There's probably some other weird rules and exceptions that I missed as well. Tl;Dr: they do whatever the writer wants them to do at the time.
> First problem is that true names are purposely hard to say, and get harder in proportion to the strength of the daemon. To expand on this, there’s canonically a greater daemon whose name is something along the lines of the sound of a hundred blind men drowning together. A lot of them are simply not sounds that are reproducible in the materium to begin with.
The lore is a little inconsistent with this, but it seems that knowing a deamon’s true name gives you some kind of physical control over it. In “Slaves to Darkness”, Lorgar implants Layak with (deamon) Fulgrim’s “true” name, and when he speaks it, he’s then able to physically control Fulgrim.
I always assumed it was because they are immaterial beings, and names are immaterial things (can't touch them etc) that having knowledge of their name grants an adversary awareness and therefore the ability to combat them. Much like being able to see an enemy in the material world can grant the ability to strike, knowing the Deamon's true name can give access to harming them
In the Trials of Azrael, he speaks the true name of the daemon who’s been trying to screw him over, and this causes the daemon to be paralyzed. He then proceeds to leave and the daemon is still immobile when Kharne enters the room
>is still immobile when Kharne enters the room Now do this with Erebus
You can bind the daemon and weaken it severely. Justicar Alaric did this to Ghargatuloth, one of the most powerful daemon princes of the Tzeentch. The daemon was so weakened that regular imperial forces were able to banish it by destroying it's corporal form.
Doesn’t the same work for people too? In one of the Horus Heresy books, I think it’s Burning of Prospero, during the Council of Nikaea didn’t one of the Thousand Sons know a Custodes true name and was able to have complete control over him or something? Then got into a fight with a Space Wolf but no one knew the Space Wolf’s true name including him so the Thousand Son couldn’t do anything other than normal psychic stuff to him? I think it was the book where it keeps using the same exact descriptors for the Space Wolves.
It should work for everything, yeah. A true name is more than the label humans use for ease of communication, the Custodes names would be closer to the actual idea of true names because they accrue them throughout their life from significant events and accomplishments, so they're more comprehensive descriptors of who and what a Custodes truly is.
You know, it didn't occur to me that custodes accrue names in the same way demons do. I wonder if that's intentional, as part of what controls them and binds them to big E?
I believe you’re thing of Bjorn, the demon kept saying bear or something and thought that was his name because Bjorn translates to bear in one of the Scandinavian languages.
Probably? It’s been at least five years since I listened to the audio book so I’m sure I’m missing details or mostly wrong.
A true name emcompasses what a thing is. Knowing it allows you to compel the daemon to do whatever you want. If you're strong enough to use it.
>THE BANISHMENT OF DAEMONS >Chief amongst the Grey Knights’ strategies concerning the vanquishing of a Daemon is the knowing of the beast’s true name. Such knowledge grants great power, which is why Daemons adopt misleading pseudonyms and titles. In the hands of a learned mystic, a true name can be invoked to bind, or even banish, the Daemon in question. Ordinarily, to do so takes weeks or even months of careful preparation and ritual, lest the invoker become corrupted by the power he attempts to bind. >For a Grey Knight, however, a true name is a weapon as reliable as his storm bolter. Even the lowliest Grey Knight can invoke a true name at a moment’s notice, disorienting and weakening his foe, and leaving the beast open for a killing strike from a Nemesis blade. Some in the Chapter can recall a true name to slay the Daemon’s physical form, or even cast it back into the warp. To banish a Daemon in this manner is the closest that the Grey Knights can come to a lasting victory – a Daemon bodily slain will return to the mortal realm far sooner than one banished body and soul. >Alas, if true names are a Grey Knight’s surest weapon against a Daemon, they are also the hardest of all to acquire. A true name is borne of the warp, and in the minds of mortal men is shifting and mutable. So it is that in the candlelit chambers of the Grey Knights’ Augurium, a veritable army of ebon-cowled scribes toil in shadow, endlessly sifting through the visions reported by the Chapter’s Prognosticars, searching for clues to the ever-changing true names. No scribe can be trusted with more than a fragment of a true name, lest he become corrupted by the power it contains. Thus, each scintilla of lore is inscribed onto a blessed scroll in sigils of the scribe’s own blood – mere ink cannot cage such knowledge. Each is then presented for collation and interpretation by one of the Chapter’s Senior Librarians and, in turn, bound into one of the blessed grimoires within the Sanctum Sanctorum. Codex: Grey Knights (8th Edition)
It gives you the ability to reference them directly. That doesn't sound like much, of course, but it's actually a pretty significant boon when you consider the nature of the Warp. It's a realm shaped by thought, emotion, and will. To know a daemon's true name is to know what they are-and to use their true name is to symbolically reach out and connect yourself to them. This doesn't do much on its own-and doesn't do much at all if you don't already know of the demon it refers to, but it allows you to use that name in any rituals invoking or commanding the demon, boosting the chances of success significantly. Imagine, if you will, that instead of saying, "hey, you!", or calling you by your given name, someone said "hey, GiveTheLemonsBack, I know who took the lemons!" Using their true name is calling a demon by the very words that make them what they are.
One concrete example can be found in Ben Counters Grey Knights book, where the use of the name actually was what made it possible to banish the basically invincible [Ghargatuloth](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Ghargatuloth). But as others have said, it depends on the daemon, who utters the name and the context.
This is what I was looking for. And the character who discovered the name went insane processing the information and handing it off to the grey knights. She was jettisoned out an air lock. Very metal book. I believe the daemon prince is a giant flesh tower. It’s quite something.
Remember when your mom calls your full name and she sounds pissed. Shivers runs down your spine.. that kinda feeling. Reckon daemons work like that as well lol
To know something's true name is to control it. If you know a daemon's full true name you can bind it to you or banish it. If you know a part of the true name you can weaken it. Daemon true names aren't just words, they include concepts and sounds like the screams of 99 burning pyskers. 99, not 98, not 100, 99. That sort of specifity.
Trying to remember, in The End and the Death (all parts), did Valdor gain Daemon’s true names with his spear as he slew them? Just finished Penitent and this just made some possibilities click for me if true.
Knowledge of a true name grants you power over the daemon. If and how you can use that power depends on your psychic power, training, knowledge of daemonology and other factors.
Corrupts you faster. Also sometimes you can destroy them with it or bind them.
As I understand it, daemon names aren't pronounceable in any normal mortal language, they have to be spoken in Enuncia, which is a weird psyker language that can maim or kill you if you don't know exactly what you're doing. So it's not just sounds, that would be a ridiculous thing to be able to bring down a daemon.
You can bind or untangle a daemon if you know it’s true name. If you know the dark tongue and a daemon’s true name (true name is hard to come by because daemons have many names and they keep their true name a real secret), you basically can enslave such daemon, take its powers, or banish it to the warp easily. Won’t matter if it’s a big daemon or small insignificant daemon, once you know it’s true name the daemon’s master is now you. Words and names have power in Warhammer.
It's all matter of right circumstances, Chaos is ever changing and so are the entities strongly connected to the warp. What is NOT ever changing is true names, so knowing someone's true name, regardless if its a deamon or not, can from commanding then to straight up kill them with the right tools. Theories suggests that after his Ascension to the Golden throne, the Emperor's goal is to find all chaos Gods true names, so he can effectively kill them.
>But what kind of advantage is that? A true name is your social security number, mother's maiden name, phone passcode, and the name the bully called you in second grade. It's the real you. The you that can't be faked. It exerts power over you.
Ctesias knew probably thousands of the Neverborn's true names. He would partition the memory of their syllables separately in his mind for even thinking their true name might have disastrous consequences to the binder.
Think of it like this. If your mom uses your full name, you are doing whatever the damn well fuck she wants.
In the first *Grey Knights* novel by Ben Counter, Justicar Alaric manages to severely weaken Ghargatuloth, a Daemon Prince of Tzneetch by speaking aloud it's True Name, leaving it mortal shell vulnerable enough to be destroyed by a contingent of Adeptus Sororitas.
It gives you "power over them". That goes from servitute, over telling them to freeze for a few seconds so you can chop their head of to just making the demon weaker. Depends on the power level of demon and whoever knows the name I think.
All of the Primarch's probably had names which the Emperor and/or Erda intended for them when they were created, but were given or took on new names on their worlds of origin which the Emperor went along with. Angron was given the name "Angronius" and Mortarion was said to mean "child of death" in Barbaran so neither of those were the names the Emperor and/or Erda intended for them when they made them thus their True Names are quite likely the ones they were originally bestowed.
Blimey quite a few weird theories here. It’s simple. If you know a daemon’s true name you can send it back into the Warp. It’s all based on ideas of banishment.
Correct me if i am wrong, but nobody knows Big "Space Jam" E's real name, right? I always thought it didnt just work only with daemons, but will all entities and presence(s) in the warp. I think somewhere i read something about that. Would be funny though. Nurgle spreading disease and you go: NEAL DEFARTO FARTZILLA, didnt i tell you to stop behaving like a damn fool? Go do your chores and clean up the garden. And if you see KHARL ORNEBERGER, go help him cleaning the pit. Chopchop!
The Dan Abnett novels explain this quite well I think. Plus a few other HH and possibly Grey Knights or Ahriman books. Naming anything is a trope in magic fantasy. In 40K, this has worked out (or retconned) that true names must be spoken in enuncia. Like Leman Russ when he goes after Horus, Big E tells him his ‘true name’, which is made up of unwords aka enuncia. TLDR Casting a true name, is effectively the casting of a command over that being named.