Naming Conventions

Many Forsaken have two names — the name they were born with and the name they earned as a werewolf. The concept of an earned name (sometimes called a “deed name”) is easy enough to grasp. Folklore and history offer plenty of examples: Johnny Appleseed, Jack the Giant-Killer, Crazy Horse, Catherine the Great, Vlad the Impaler and so on. An earned name can be particularly important to a werewolf, because Uratha culture is based on action. It doesn’t matter who one’s human family was. What matters after the First Change is what your character makes of herself. It’s a sign of the new life that he’s been born into, whether he wanted it or not. Some Uratha honor this tradition. Others ignore it.

A deed name is usually earned before or during tribal initiation. This often has something to do with how a character performs, though it can be given in accordance to some vision or impression an elder has concerning the subject. For example, Elias Winterborn earned his name because an Ithaeur of his tribe saw that his soul carried a portion of the strength of the winter storm that raged at Elias’ birth.

Although the trend for earned names is to merge a werewolf’s personal name with an earned sobriquet, this isn’t always the case. Some werewolves carry deed names that make no reference to their lives before the First Change, perhaps because they wish to forget their former lives, or perhaps because they favour a simpler name.

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