What type of names do you like when it comes to evil orders or organizations? Can you give me a few tips? I cannot seem to come with something original...
Depends on the type of organization. I tend to go for words or names from mythology, religion and mysticism, or even just words translated to Latin, Greek or other suitable languages. But, really, it can be anything. In general you want something that is meaningful, sounds good and (at least in my opinion) slightly obscure. I like giving them names that might make the average reader pull out a dictionary or log on to Wikipedia and go: "Oh, so that's what it means!"
One definite piece of advice: don't make it sound too corny. Names like "The Council of Evil", or "The Dark Order of Blood" definitely would fall under that category. Unless if you're writing a parody or something more towards the comedic side, names like that spell out "Obviously Evil!" and "Uncreative". Many real life organizations have similar enough names, regardless of whether they are evil or not. The "Communist Party of Vietnam" may sound "evil", but it's only a one-word difference from the "Democratic Party of America" or the "Republican Party of America".
I called my villains the Sefirot, with their private army, the Engels. There's also ParaSol (Paradigm Solutions), which started out as an Umbrella Corporation parody, and sort of evolved from there. Go with something that suits their ideals. If they're a company, go with something that seems like something a MegaCorp would go by, which, by the way, CamelCase is big with MegaCorps, as is portmanteaux. Most fictional companies have vague titles. Hell, an Umbrella Corporation is a company that owns other companies. It's a business term used as a company name. If it's a guild of some sort, then adding Guild to the end is a good way to start, though a bit obvious. One thing to note, you don't want it to be obvious, just maybe ominous. Maybe play on double meanings, or connotations. Even just words that are innocuous with sinister personal meanings. One I've used before is Synchronicity. It's basically an event that is meaningfully coincidental. A friend makes you their recipe, and years later you order that dish only to have the last one ordered by the friend you haven't seen in years. Years later, you tell the story to some friends, and in walks the old friend from before, completely coincidentally. It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards. Something like that can have a personal meaning. For instance, what do main characters experience, if not meaningful coincidences?
Mircosoft. Foreign wods can work well, or like COG said. MK-12. What would the people who run the organization name it? Do they want to stand out? Do they want to blend in?
Acronyms work a treat, though as Cogito said, keep it innocuous. Let your story build up the image of the villains instead of depending entirely on the name.
I think that this is a good point. Do they see themselves as evil and embrace it? I'd say that most good villains don't, so they're unlikely to name their organization Evils R Us or something overtly and ridiculously evil sounding.
I think you should use a word that either isn't common or combine a suffix and a prefix to create a new word. It will give the organization a sense of danger of the unknown, but people will be able to find out what the word or combined word(s) mean by looking in the dictionary. ~Eliza
I'll play with some etymologies. Like Anders tends to, I'm also searching for a mythology-aligned name. After all, they're the followers of Hel (the Hades-like female counterpart of Norse mythology, to put it that way).
Well I don't use organizations much but when I do my names tend to be a play on something dark and sinister like Demoni (100 points to anyone who can guess what that's named after XP) I also like a less is more approach with names like someone brought up. Things like The Brotherhood or The Organization is always fun. However, if you are doing a more of a religion cult I would gravitate towards naming them partial after there deity.
I settled up with the 'Skalja'. It was a name used to refer to Hel in Old Norse (Or some other language, can't remember), and well, it is fitting. I just wanted a Norse mythology-based name for 'em.
