Hasan-i Sabbah took Alamut in 1090. The mountain state he built ran a hundred and sixty six years, negotiated with Saladin and Richard, and fell to the Mongols in a single campaign. The word it left behind, assassin, traveled through the crusaders’ Latin into every language in Europe, carrying a legend historians still argue with. This page rows the documented register: the lords, the castles, the attributed hits with their blame framing kept, the parallel traditions, and fiction that names itself. This table holds 60 of them, every row with its source named.
The killing trade lives here. The information trade is the spy names page’s own. Every name comes with a receipt.
What are assassin names?
A word with a history, and history with a word. The register runs on four engines. The Nizari record: real lords, real castles, real years, and a surrender in 1256 that ended it. The attributed hit: the killings the chronicles blame on the fida’is, rowed with the blame framing intact because the chronicles were combatants. The parallel traditions: the Sicarii of Josephus, the Thuggee of the colonial record with its numbers contested, the shinobi of Iga and Koga with their late manuals. And the word’s own road, from the pejorative hashshashin through crusader Latin to the English noun, with the movement’s own words, fida’i and da’i, restored beside it. Modern real assassins are kept out by design, and the FAQ says why. Coinages sit at the bottom, labeled coined, because a name machine should show its own grammar honestly.
Grouped by layer. The layer stays on every row.
Assassin names with layer, build and meaning receipts
Name
Layer
Built from
Meaning
Copy
The Nizari record: the documented lords of the mountain state, with their years
Hasan-i Sabbah
the Nizari record
a Persian name, the missionary’s own
c.1050 to 1124: took Alamut in 1090 and built a mountain state out of a mission; wrote his own memoir, preserved only in fragments his enemies quoted
Kiya Buzurg-Ummid
the Nizari record
the second lord of Alamut
Hasan’s chosen successor, d.1138; the state outlived its founder by design
Hassan II
the Nizari record
styled on remembrance of his name
proclaimed the Qiyama, the resurrection, at Alamut in 1164: the new age declared inside the castle walls; murdered two years later
Rashid al-Din Sinan
the Nizari record
the Syrian master’s full style
d.1193: the lord of Masyaf, the negotiator the crusaders dealt with; the tent-note story of Saladin’s life is the chronicles’ tale, kept as one
Rukn al-Din Khurshah
the Nizari record
the last lord of Alamut
surrendered the castle to Hulagu in 1256 and was killed on the road east with his family; the state ended in one season
the Old Man of the Mountain
the Nizari record
le Vieux de la Montagne, the crusaders’ name
not one man: the Franks’ title for whoever held Masyaf or Alamut; the legend borrowed the singular and kept it
The castle register: the strongholds: names that are places and places that are receipts
Alamut
the castle register
the eagle’s teaching, one folk read says (flagged)
the nest taken in 1090; the etymology everyone repeats is the etymology nobody can prove, and the row says so
Masyaf
the castle register
the Syrian seat
Sinan’s castle, standing today above its town; the western legend’s address
Lambsar
the castle register
the strongest of the valley walls
the great fortress of the Rudbar; the Mongols unmade it in 1257, and the ruin still shows the plan
Gerdkuh
the castle register
the round mountain
held out until 1270, years past the fall of Alamut; the last of the Persian castles to lower a flag
Anjedan
the castle register
the village that became the center
after the castles, the imam’s line re-centered in this Persian village, quiet by design
The attributed hits: the chronicle record, rowed with the blame framing kept and the arguments flagged
Nizam al-Mulk
the attributed hits
the Seljuk vizier, 1092
the empire’s chancellor, stabbed on the road; the chronicles blame the Nizaris, and modern historians keep arguing (flagged)
Janah al-Dawla
the attributed hits
the emir of Homs, 1103
killed in Damascus; Ibn al-Qalanisi, the Damascene chronicler, carries the attribution
al-Amir
the attributed hits
the Fatimid caliph, 1130
killed in Cairo in the middle of the Nizari-Fatimid feud; the blame landed on the Nizaris in the tellings that survived
Raymond II of Tripoli
the attributed hits
the count, 1152
stabbed at the city gate; the attribution is the chronicles’ and the chronicles were at war (flagged)
Conrad of Montferrat
the attributed hits
the king-elect of Jerusalem, 1192
stabbed in the street at Tyre by two men the chroniclers called Assassins; who paid them is argued to this day
Mawdud
the attributed hits
the atabeg of Mosul, 1113
the Seljuk’s best general against the Franks, knifed at Damascus; the attribution runs through the same chronicle lane
Edward of England
the attributed hits
the prince, Acre, 1272
wounded by a dagger said to be poisoned; he killed his attacker and survived to be crowned Edward I; the incident is documented, the order behind it is not
The wider traditions: Sicarii, Thuggee, the ninja of Iga and Koga: documented traditions with their contested parts flagged
Sicarius
the wider traditions
sica, the curved dagger (Latin)
the dagger-man, Rome’s word for the hired blade; the word itself is a weapon profile
the Sicarii
the wider traditions
the plural, the dagger men of Judea
the movement Josephus describes in the first century: short blades, crowds, Jerusalem before the fall
Eleazar ben Yair
the wider traditions
the Sicarii leader at Masada
commanded the last holdout in 73; Josephus gives the speech, and the mass grave story is Josephus alone (flagged)
Masada
the wider traditions
the fortress word, the stronghold
the rock that ended the story; the name now means any last stand, by way of one historian’s account
Sicario
the wider traditions
the same Latin word, alive in Spanish
the dagger word never left the language; the modern border lexicon borrowed Rome’s
Thug
the wider traditions
thag, the deceiver (Hindi)
the English word for the strangler brotherhoods of the colonial record; the trials and the numbers are the colonizers’ files, the word is now a common slur, and both facts are flagged on the row
Behram
the wider traditions
Thug Behram, the 19th-century name
the most accused man of the Thuggee trials; the body count in the colonial record is contested, not counted (flagged)
Thagi
the wider traditions
the Hindi word for the deception craft
the language’s own name for the trade the trials made infamous; the word police and informers used in the files
Phansigar
the wider traditions
phansi, the hanging + gar, the neck (Hindi-Persian lane)
the strangler’s other name, the noose word; the same men, called by the method
Shinobi
the wider traditions
to steal away, to endure (Japanese)
the stealth word of the Japanese tradition and what the practitioners called the work; the west took the other reading, ninja, from the same characters
Shinobi-no-mono
the wider traditions
those who steal away, the full phrase
the whole term the short word came from: a person of endurance and stealth, said in six syllables
Kunoichi
the wider traditions
the characters for woman, split three ways
the female form, written as a puzzle: ku-no-ichi spells woman in pieces, a name that is also a riddle
Ninjutsu
the wider traditions
the art of stealth
the tradition’s own word for its craft; the surviving manuals are real and late, mostly the 17th century
Iga and Koga
the wider traditions
the two neighboring provinces
the mountain regions that kept the tradition, paired ever since; the 1581 invasion of Iga broke it, by the victors’ account
the Bansenshukai
the wider traditions
ten thousand rivers gather into the sea, the title’s own gloss
the great manual of 1676, compiled a century after the practical end; the title itself is a name, and the book is the receipt
Hattori Hanzo
the wider traditions
a samurai family name + given name
the documented commander of Tokugawa’s guard with a ninja reputation; a real man the legend grew around, and the gate at Edo still carries his name
Fujibayashi Yasutake
the wider traditions
the compiler of the Bansenshukai, 1676
assembled the great manual of the tradition a century after its practical end; the book is the receipt
Momochi Sandayu
the wider traditions
a name the Iga tradition keeps
the third of the great names; the record is tradition more than document, and the row says so (flagged)
Onmitsu
the wider traditions
the hidden official
the Tokugawa word for the secret service of the shogunate; the state’s own name for its shadows
The word’s road: from the pejorative Arabic to the English noun, with their own words restored
Hashshashin
the word’s road
the hashish-eaters, the pejorative read (contested)
what their enemies called the Nizaris; whether the hashish read was practice or insult is one of history’s running arguments, and the row keeps the argument
Assassinus
the word’s road
the medieval Latin form
the crusaders’ chronicles carried the Arabic into Latin; the borrowing is the receipt of contact
Assassino
the word’s road
the Italian step
the merchants’ tongue passed it on; Mediterranean trade routes carried words like cargo
Assassin
the word’s road
the English landing
in English by the crusader chronicles’ translation lane; the word arrived meaning the sect and settled meaning the trade
Fida’i
the word’s road
the self-sacrificer, their own word
what the Nizaris called their own; the word the pejorative buried and the row restores
Da’i
the word’s road
the summoner, the mission rank
the caller: the missionary grade that carried the movement from city to city
Fedayeen
the word’s road
the plural of fida’i, in modern use
the old word’s second life in the modern Middle East; the grammar survived, the meaning shifted
The modern line: the Nizari continuation told respectfully: schools now, not daggers
the Aga Khan
the modern line
the honorific the line carries
the Nizari imams’ modern title; the line that ran Alamut now runs schools and hospitals, and the receipt is the difference
Hasan Ali Shah
the modern line
Aga Khan I, the 19th century
the first to carry the title to Persia’s court and then to India after the 1840s; the migration that made the modern community
The sources lane: who wrote the record we have, and what their position was
Marco Polo
the sources lane
the Travels, c.1298
the garden-and-hashish tale arrives through him; he passed Alamut after the fall and told it as told to him, and the row flags the teller (flagged)
Juvayni
the sources lane
the conqueror’s historian
rode with Hulagu in 1256, saved the library’s astronomy and burned the rest by his own account; half our record is the victor’s choice of what to keep
Hulagu
the sources lane
the Mongol prince
the grandson of Genghis who took the castles in one campaign; the end of the mountain state is his receipt
The fiction and game lane: documented fiction under nominative use, the trademark noted
the Jackal
the fiction and game lane
Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal, 1971
the professional with no name and one job; the novel built the modern assassin plot and every imitator follows it
Anton Chigurh
the fiction and game lane
Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men, 2005
the coin-toss killer; the argument of the book wearing a haircut
Altaïr
the fiction and game lane
Assassin’s Creed, Ubisoft, 2007 (nominative use)
the game hero whose order is a fiction built on the real Nizari name; Altaïr is Arabic for the flying eagle, and the trademark belongs to Ubisoft, noted for what it is
Coined epithets: built on the documented grammar, labeled coined on every row
the Velvet Knife
coined, labeled coined
the soft word + the hard tool, the documented grammar
a made up epithet: no chronicle or case file carries it
the Hollow Blade
coined, labeled coined
the hidden word + the tool
coined for this page, labeled so
the Grey Vow
coined, labeled coined
the color + the oath
coined for this page, labeled so
Still Hand
coined, labeled coined
the calm word + the instrument
coined for this page, labeled so
the Second Shadow
coined, labeled coined
the number + the follower
coined for this page, labeled so
the Unseen Hour
coined, labeled coined
the negation + the time
coined for this page, labeled so
the Long Patience
coined, labeled coined
the time word doubled
coined for this page, labeled so
the Paper Vow
coined, labeled coined
the thin material + the oath
coined for this page, labeled so
The guard line: killing here, tradecraft there
The split, above the fold where it belongs. This page owns the killing register: the historical assassins, their traditions, their vocabulary, and the fiction that borrows the glamour. The spy names page owns the information trade, the codewords and the dead drops: spying is theft and lying, a different craft with a different register. The knight namespage owns the feudal side of the same crusading century, Godfrey and Saladin and the orders, so the era is covered whole without a shared row.
For the cast around one shadow, the how to name a character guide walks the same reasoning across the sheet.
Four systems, tabled
One register, four engines. The lord says who ran the state. The hit says what the chronicles recorded. The word says what each side called it. The fiction says what the borrowing built:
The four systems behind assassin names
System
Grammar
Examples
What it says
The lord
a name + a castle + years
Hasan-i Sabbah, Sinan, Khurshah
the mountain state’s record
The hit
a victim + a year + the blame framing
Conrad 1192, Nizam al-Mulk 1092
the method the chronicles record
The word
a glossed term, source labeled
Fida’i, Hashshashin, Shinobi
their words against their enemies’
The fiction
author or studio + year
the Jackal 1971, Altaïr 2007
the borrowed glamour, named
The villain names page rows the wider menace register, and the fantasy names hub tables this page beside the whole genre grid.
The etymology, told honestly
The hashish story is the contested part, and the page does not launder it.The old read: hashshashin, hashish-eaters, men drugged into paradise by Marco Polo’s garden tale. The scholarly pushback, running a century now: the word is an enemy’s pejorative, the garden is a traveler’s story told after the fall, and no Nizari source claims any of it. The road the word took is not contested: Arabic to the crusaders’ medieval Latin assassinus, through Italian and French, into English, where it stopped meaning the sect and started meaning the trade. The row keeps both facts: the road is real, the garden is flagged.
The movement’s own words are rowed beside the pejorative: fida’i for the person, da’i for the mission rank, and the modern line that carried the imamate to the Aga Khans, told as the continuation it is.
The parallel traditions
The dagger is older and wider than Alamut. The Sicarii worked Jerusalem’s crowds six centuries before Hasan took his castle, and Josephus, hostile and alone, is nearly the whole record, which Eleazar ben Yair’s row says out loud. The Thuggee trials produced the word thug and a body of colonial paperwork whose counts modern historians treat as evidence of an administration rather than a census, and the row carries that flag twice. The shinobi tradition kept its provinces and produced its manuals a century after its practical end, in 1676’s Bansenshukai, which is why the document lane is rowed beside the legend. Every tradition above is documented, and every documented dispute is kept.
When you name a character from this register, the honest move is the documented one: a real tradition’s own word, glossed, or a coined epithet labeled coined. The character naming guide walks the same reasoning for the whole cast.
Assassin names questions, answered
Where does the word assassin come from?
From hashshashin, the Arabic word their enemies used for the Nizari Ismailis, by way of the crusaders’ Latin. The popular read takes it as hashish-eaters and tells Marco Polo’s garden story. Historians have argued for a century that the hashish explanation is a folk etymology, an insult fixed by repetition, and the row keeps the argument instead of settling it. The movement’s own word for its people was fida’i, the self-sacrificer, and that word is rowed here too.
Were the hashshashin real?
The Nizari Ismaili state was real: castles, imams, diplomacy, a hundred and sixty six years from Alamut 1090 to the Mongol surrender of 1256. What is contested is the legend layer: the drugged garden, the trained devotion, the stories the crusaders took home. The attributed assassinations are rowed above with the chronicles’ blame framing kept, because the chronicles were written by participants in the wars. The real history is a mountain polity that survived the Seljuks, negotiated with Saladin and Richard, and ended under Hulagu.
What about the game names, Altaïr and Ezio?
Altaïr is rowed once, under nominative use, with the trademark noted: Assassin’s Creed is Ubisoft’s, 2007, and its order is a fiction built on the real Nizari name. Ezio (2009) and the numbered Agent 47 of Hitman (2000, IO Interactive) stay in this prose card for the same reason the pirate page keeps Jack Sparrow out of its rows: modern trademarked characters get named, not banked. The fiction lane rows the documented older set, Forsyth’s Jackal (1971) and McCarthy’s Chigurh (2005), with author and year.
Why does this page stop before the modern era?
Because a name bank is the wrong shelf for real modern killings. This site rows fantasy-useful registers with receipts: the pre-modern Nizari record where the historiography is mature, the documented parallel traditions with their contested parts flagged, and fiction that names itself as fiction. Twentieth-century assassins and their victims are living memory and living grief, and this page keeps them out of a copyable table by design. The modern Nizari line is rowed, respectfully, as what it is: a community foundation age, not a dagger age.
Where these names come from.The Nizari record follows the standard histories of Hasan-i Sabbah, Alamut and the Syrian castles, read against the primary lane: Juvayni’s chronicle, written with the conquering army in 1256 and honest about burning most of the library; Rashid al-Din’s compilation; and Marco Polo’s Travels (c.1298) as the flagged source of the garden tale. The attributed assassinations are rowed with their chronicle attributions kept and the modern arguments flagged (Nizam al-Mulk, Conrad of Montferrat above all). The Sicarii lane follows Josephus with his sole-source role flagged at Masada. The Thuggee lane follows the colonial trial record with the counts contested and the word’s modern life noted. The ninja lane follows the Bansenshukai (1676) and the documented Iga and Koga histories, with Momochi Sandayu flagged as tradition. The word-road lane follows the standard etymological record with the hashish folk etymology flagged as contested. The fiction lane names author, studio and year, with the Ubisoft trademark noted under nominative use. Every coined row is labeled coined. No frequency ranking is claimed; none exists. Where every name’s receipt comes from →