D&D General Help Me Rename a Culture in My Campaign

[Retreater]

So, to be clear, calling them Grym Dwarves wouldn't have any derogatory real-world suggestions, or would the homophone for "grim" be one?

I'm not sure what the homophone for Grym would be (unless I'm being dense). The derogatory name that I had been using was "black," so as long as I steer away from anything racial, I should be good.

 

[prabe]

I'm not sure what the homophone for Grym would be (unless I'm being dense). The derogatory name that I had been using was "black," so as long as I steer away from anything racial, I should be good.

Sorry. "Homohone" means "sound-alike." "Grym" agruably is a homophone for "grim." I wanted to make sure that wasn't the sort of thing you were attempting to avoid, because it seems ... pretty obvious to me, and I didn't want to suggest it, if you were trying to avoid it.

 

[Retreater]

Sorry. "Homohone" means "sound-alike." "Grym" agruably is a homophone for "grim." I wanted to make sure that wasn't the sort of thing you were attempting to avoid, because it seems ... pretty obvious to me, and I didn't want to suggest it, if you were trying to avoid it.

Ah. It was also obvious to me that "Grym" sounded like "grim." I was just concerned maybe there was a slur or offensive term I was missing. Thanks for the clarification.

 

[Eltab]

Like steel in a fire, they have been tempered by the rituals, made stronger by these new forces. Whereas the previous dwarves allowed devotion to tradition to weaken them, these dwarves are willing to change and grow stronger, to tear down the old and reshape it into something better.

Katana Clan of the Dwarves

Is there an obscure term for some weapon Dwarves like to use - a kind of axe or hammer or whatever - that this group's leaders used to describe their new culture, which other clans picked up the name of the weapon once it became the leadership's 'signature item' and applied that name to the whole clan because "everybody knows who uses that kind of axe"?

P.S. I know a katana is a sword not an axe; I wanted a well-known analogy.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

They are not dark skinned. The adjective "black" was used to refer to their soot covered city. And calling them black dwarves was also a callback to the pact they made with dark powers.

In conjunction with suggestions made by others like MattW, el-remmen and so forth...

“Soot“ Dwarves (dvegr) could easily mutate and contract over time to Sudvegr.

“Sotam” (see also Old Norse sot, Old Dutch soet, North Frisian sutt) is an old proto-Germanic word for soot (”what settles”), so we could have Sotamdvegr, Sot(d)vegr, Soet(d)vegr or Sutt(d)vegr.

Using another northern word, “svart” could get us Svart-dvegr or even Svartvegr/Svardvegr