Moriarty
Voldemort
Piers Morgan
Morbius
Morgoth
Morlocks
Moreau
Mordred
Morgana
Mordac
Gmork
Moria
Mordor
Morpork
Let us not forget the most diabolical villain of them all: Mork from Ork
Morticia
Mor’du, the bear prince.
JP Morgan
Morgan Stanley
Or maybe Mor Furniture for Less has a sinister backstory. Today the discount San Diego furniture market - tomorrow, the world!
Moridin and Mordeth are both villainous characters from the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan, however, there are also several characters with “mor” that are not villains (Morgase, Morvrin, Fedwin Morr, etc)
Morbo the Annihilator, the Futurama newsreader.
Bavmorda
Morla (isn’t really a villain, but will make you depressed)
I’m going to guess the trend is 10% inspired by “homonymous and complementary dual etymology” and 90% mindlessly aping Tolkien.
Has anyone noticed the predominance of repeated pairs of letters in hero names? Bilbo/Frodo Baggins. Harry Potter, Ellen Ripley, etc.
Precise, not accurate…
Gorn
Horta
Corbomite
Soran
Gowron
Lore
Borg
Morlocks from Time Machine, a whole race, not just one person.
I’ll give you “Borg”
And the most sinister of them all: Mor-Ee Po-Vitch
Mor = “great” in Gaelic. But coincidentally, dubh = “black”.
Just to be clear, I didn’t mean your list was inaccurate, rather and only that the Star Trek universe seems to have a thing for near-Mor “_or” names.
May I have Gorn? I’ve been planting meme-seeds for a Gorn remix as the next ST movie.
Tolkien’s invented languages, in turn, were inspired by a mixture of Finnish, Germanic, and Old English languages, so your proximal cause does not dispute, and in fact may support, TFA’s claim as a distal cause. AFAICT no one is claiming that most writers consciously choose such names based on etymology.