What does Rhaast mean anyway? (Serious post - Names and their meaning in Runeterra)

Raptor·9/22/2019, 8:45:27 PM·3 votes·5,949 views

Hi guys, inb4 I get the obligatory "Obey" answer, I got really curious as to how much thought was put in this phrase and into naming in general when it comes to champions in league. So, I decided to make an analysis on names of different champions from different regions to see if they do actually carry any sort of meaning.

This is what I've managed to come up with :

Demacia - Names here usually showcase the person's status or their place in society, the ones who come to mind being the really suggestive ones such as Crownguard Garen or Lightshield JarvanIV .

Ionia- The only piece of information I can really go with in Ionia is from Yasuo's Yasuo lore (albeit this might not be canon anymore) where it stated that Yasuo isn't his real name but it's the name he was given once he joined the swordsman school in order calm his temper so I assume his name has a special meaning for ionians.

This is also enforced in the case of Zed Zed who decided to give Kayn Kayn an Ionian name, Shieda even though he was born a noxian ( this makes me assume that ionians in general put a lot more emphasis on their names than other nations)

Icathia- From the story "Where Icathia once stood" we learned that icathians used to have their names composed of a surname, unique to each of them, followed by the name of their parents, their occupation or the order which they belonged to and their clan name ( for example Jax's Jax real name is Saijax Cail-Rynx Kohari Icath’un).

Shurima- Now this is the part where it gets interesting because although we know nothing about the meaning of actual shuriman champions such as Azir, Xerath, Nasus etc. we do know that all voidborn champions' names are in ancient shuriman and each and every one has a suggestive meaning that befits the creature: Kha'zix = “You Face Yourself”, Vel'koz= “To understand by unmaking”, etc.

This is really what got me thinking, what if the Darkin, who were actual shuriman ascended way back in the past actually have names that showcase their traits and carry an actual meaning that goes beyond the "double a" meme?

As far as we know Rhaast is and quite possibly was a violent individual but unlike Aatrox Aatrox who was described as a glorious warrior, at least present day Rhaast seems to be more into manipulating or infesting and corrupting people (this can be gathered from his quotes such as "I will be your new master" or "I cannot wait to infest them").

Now I'm fairly certain I'm looking way too deep into this but I like to think that the people at Riot built a world on set of guidelines yet left a lot of things up for speculation so our imagination could run wild trying to fill in the gaps.

I gotta say it was quite fun trying to piece together what little lore I had on the matter and I'm really curious to see what other people think about this.

Tl;DR - Rhaast saying his name means "Obey" might actually be the truth xDD

4 Comments

Ebonmaw Dragon9/22/2019, 8:59:51 PM5 votes

Xerath was named by Azir, it was meant to mean "one who shares", but after what he did to the empire, the meaning changed to "devil / hateful"

Considering that, i guess that Rhaast could mean "Obey" as "you must always obey your emperor" or something like that.

Also, Kassadin (Kassaiadyn) means "whom does the desert know"

4 Step Cadence9/22/2019, 8:56:25 PM3 votes

Khada Jhin means "Golden Excellence" in Ionian.