Naming fictional military units?

[Dave]

Most official names for regiments are very boring and undistinguished i.e. The '52th Regiment of Foot'. You have the 4077th MASH, so I imagine in some 24th Century space-war you might have the 4,000,019th Space Marines.

Obviously, the nicknames are more popular and much more familiar. As has been mentioned, these were mostly after the person who raised them, or the name of the Colonel who commanded them. The '19th Regiment of Foot' were the Green Howards because at the time there were two Colonel Howards. One regiment wore green caps and one wore buff caps. The other became the 'buffs'. Other regiments are named after the colour of uniforms or shape and design of badges i.e. Cauliflowers.

They could be distinguished by being the King's Own, or Queen's Own or Princess' Own Regiment. Why not 'Darth Vader's Own Death Star Guards'?

They are also named for places because that was thought to be an aid to recruiting in that particular region. So the 19th Regiment of Foot is also the 1st Yorkshire North Riding. This rose to a peak in the First World War where you had the conscripted men raised from the same villages or professions or even workplaces i.e. Armoured Farmers and Coal Heavers.

So, I think you have enough room to be as creative as you wish.

 

[Vladd67]

Then again you have the Warhammer 40K books where the units are called names such as The Lunar Wolves, The Imperial Fists, The Blood Angels etc etc. as well as being the 10th company or similar.

 

[Toby Frost]

Different societies name units in different ways. The Legion of the Steel Skull is clearly not going to be from the same background as the 33rd Deepspace Hussars.

That said I agree that I simply can't imagine a WW2 unit surviving, albeit changed, in this way, especially if they are mercenaries. The current fashion for corporate blandness in mercenary names may change, but I can't imagine a mercenary unit celebrating a victory/event in which they weren't yet formed. I'd have thought that to bring the mercenaries together as a whole (especially since they may include non-Dutchmen by 4000) they would choose a victory from the early part of their own career. (Or perhaps the place they recruit, their sponsor's name, or some nickname/insult they've made their own).

 

[Xelah]

Time Travel. You could have the actual men from WWII get dropped 2000 years into the future. basing the work in the 4000's alone makes this scifi, time travel would make a WWII unit more palatable... at least to me anyway.

 

[Brett Howell]

Thanks for all your input peoples.

At the moment I've done some revisions to the time line - which seem to help a few other problems I've had as well. I've pushed back the unit creation to much later (2,800's to be precise) and pushed forward the "present day" to around 3300 - 500 years is still a long time, but better than the 2500 years before. This helped a lot - not having to tie things in with actual events, as well as being able to be more liberal with the unit name as well as a few things not directly tied to the unit. And best of all, I can still keep the original ideas I had for a few of the characters.

 

[Purdy Bear]

You may also wish to look into the size of the military unit. Most armies use different names for different size of man power:

Ie Regiment, Battalion, Company.

 

[Cavalry]

What size units ( how many men ) are you talking about

A section of horse is 3-4
A squad is say 10
A platoon 30
A company 100-200
Battalions 400+
Regiments 2 - 4 Battallions

These units would typically be numbers after that Regiments and Divisions could have names etc

It depends on the background of the country who is naming them if you want a general feel , left wing say numbers , right wing more likely names for elite units.

Cavalry