> > When I think of evil names, I think of ones that have "mor" in them -- isn't that a Latin word for "death," or part of it?
>
> Well... it is, yes and no. The Latin morpheme "mor" does bring to mind the words "mortis" (death, or a corpse), "morbidus" (sickly and diseased), and "mortalis" (transitory, human, perishable). Actually I'd be more inclined to identify the linguistic morpheme for death as "mort-" or "morb-" because "mor" also forms part of the root for "moralis" (ethics) and "mordeo" (to nip at, or vex). Not to mention that in many languages the word LOVE also contains the "mor" syllable: i.e. "amor" in Latin and Portuguese; "amore" in Italian; and "amour" in French.
>
> I guess you have to be cautious in creating names that'd have universal appeal (or non-appeal in this case, since you're looking for stuff that sounds particularly nefarious and sephulcral.:-) Take, for example, the prefix "mal", which means "Evil" or "badly" in nearly all the Romance languages. In Hebrew, however, the "mal" morpheme is totally innocent; you find it in names such as Malachi, which means "my messenger" (my angel). I recall that C.S. Lewis even chose the term "Maleldil" as the name for God in his science fantasy trilogy.

I needed something evil for the villain to shout in a story I was writing several years back, and I asked a passing English teacher for assistance. She suggested that I use "Malphanx," because "mal" is evil-sounding in general, and "phanx" is... well... roughly the same. I modified it to "MALPHANXXX."

There's no real point to that, I guess. I just thought I'd throw it out there.