Sometimes you get lucky as a Star Wars writer. I've had the unexpected pleasure of naming three of the dozen or so known Darths, and it all happened pretty quick. The various opportunities came up while writing the Dark Forces Saga and my contributions to Vader: The Ultimate Guide. Making up my dastardly Darth trio are Darth Zannah, Darth Ruin, and Darth Millennial.

Naming Darths is a sort of art. Not that I'm any good at it. It's certainly not rocket science, but like most of you I did pick up on a few of George Lucas' thematic and structural inclinations. Besides the obvious facts that the names generally carry a malicious connotation and that they are not a Sith's "true" name, the Darth appellations generally come in two syllables or three (Vader, Tyranus, Sidious), and less often one (Maul, Bane), and when multi-syllabic or high in character count, Darths tend to end with an -iss sound (Sidious, Plagueis). There's also the frequent appearance of the "u" sound, both guttural [ū] and phonetic [ŭ] ... except for Vader, cuz, you know... he's the chosen one.

Star Wars Expanded Universe literature has largely followed this model, though with some interesting exceptions, which I tried to exploit with Zannah and Millennial. With Darth Ruin, though, I tried to keep things simple. This was, after all, going to be the name of the father of the Dark Lords of the Sith as known to the majority of Star Wars fans.

Simple, of course, doesn't mean unoriginal. I decided pretty quickly on using a variation of the Maul formula. The reasons were multiple: 1) It's the most underused format for Darth names, 2) That one syllable and four short letters pack a huge amount of character and imagery, and 3) It was simple and distinct from either of the two previous Darths I'd stamped.

A bit of background on ol' Darth Ruin. The character was first introduced in Terry Brook's novelization for The Phantom Menace. There he was described as a male Jedi Knight who left the order 2,000 years before the events of Episode I, taking 50 or so Jedi with him. With these followers, the nameless Jedi started the Sith Order, though these same followers eventually betrayed and murdered him, plunging the Sith into a millennium-long civil war. Remaining anonymous, the first edition of the Essential Chronology stated that this Sith Lord did not found the original Sith Order but a new one--a safety net for pre-existing stories involving ancient Sith.

Other than his name, for "The Path of Evil" in Vader: The Ultimate Guide, I added two significant facts to the character's background. First, I eschewed the played out young, dumb Jedi who falls to the dark side angle for the Dooku-esque mold: the thinking Jedi Master who "wisely" turns to evil. At that point, it made perfect sense to also establish Ruin as one of the Lost Twenty--the twenty Jedi Masters who left the Jedi Order to pursue alternate destinies. I also decided not to try to reveal Ruin's true name; in my opinion, if Ruin is considered by the Jedi as one of the Lost Twenty, they probably don't know he became the first Dark Lord of the new Sith. (Later, I would reveal Ruin's true name along with more of his backstory in the Sith history lesson Evil Never Dies).

On a half sheet of scrap paper, my canvas of choice when brainstorming, crumpled and with driving directions written on the opposite side, is the following list of improbable Sith names from which "Ruin" immediately jumped out. (Hold your applause/laughter until the end, please).

Darth:

1) Reaper
2) Fatalis
3) Necro
4) Mortalis
5) Eradicus
6) Ruin
7) Execute--- (interrupted as I recalled the name of the Star Destroyer Executor)
8) Solopsis

I also made a quick list of Sithy "professions" to play on:

necromancer
sorcerer
warlock
archimage

"Ruin" pretty cleanly summed up both Ruin's seduction to the dark side (the word comes from the Latin ruīna meaning "fall") and his ultimate fate as a Dark Lord, while also describing the chaotic destruction that befell the Sith after his death. I didn't have to think about it much longer. It might not be one syllable, but it gave the illusion alright, and it fit most of the other Darth criteria. I wrote down the name, Lucasfilm approved it, and the rest is Holocron history. ~ If evil has a name, it's Abel G. Peņa.

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Continue onto Extinct for Over a Millennium: or, A Darth By Any Other Name, Part 2


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