Corax (Primarch of the one of the Something Raven chapters) is Latin for Raven,
40k tries to use a lot of Latin. Emphasis on the word 'tries'. Typically it's not very good with it. I still find the end of
Lord of the Night amusing.
Ave dominus nox, it says, which is supposed to mean 'hail the lord of the night'. It does not. It means 'hail lord night'. Spurrier used the nominative case of
nox - he should be using the genitive for 'of the'. A more correct Latin translation would be
ave dominus noctis. I could understand using a fake Latin translation if the correct phrase doesn't sound dramatic or intimidating, but in this case, the proper phrase sounds every bit as atmospheric as the printed one.
So that's what GW gets for not doing the research. I suppose most people wouldn't be bothered by that sort of thing, but it sometimes bothers me. It's mostly if the phrase itself is a very simple one. Getting more complex phrases wrong is something I'd be more sympathetic to. That isn't one of them, though. Both
dominus and
nox decline completely regularly in the present tense and are quite common words. It's very basic grammar, which is what makes it annoying. Getting complex grammar wrong is forgivable, though.
Anyway, there was no reason to complain about that. I just looked at
Lord of the Night recently and it's been bothering me.
Back to the topic, though, yes, there are a lot of historical references. I imagine they're supposed to be amusing, though it goes without saying that the vast majority are not. There have been topics about them before.
