I want monsters with names that sound like they come from fantasy. I was greatly irritated with 3E’s generally stupefying of monster names. It stands out most strongly with the baatezu and tanar’ri. Er, pardon me, the “devils” and “demons.” Not to mention the bearded devils and chain devils – formerly barbazu and kytons.

So long as the names are more or less interesting, I can get behind them.

Currently: My four Human cultures are Northman, Gael, Saracen, and Atlantean (Greco-Roman). This pretty much covers everything that’s not Native American or Asian…

For me, though, it isn’t a huge matter of the name that gets me: It’s the role and tone of the creature and how badly it will jar with the theme of the campaign. Like I said above, if there’s a thematic difference, I either reskin it or don’t use it.

When I run fantasy, I tend towards pulp, which usually means my enemies are very common (player races) or basically unique, so I rarely name them. It’s very rare that someone says to Conan “There is an otyugh in that chasm!” Instead, they say “Beware the chasm, for it is inhabited by a beast of nightmare!” So that usually works for me.

I’m also very guilty of Shemping (using the stats of one monster but describing it in a different way that better suits my campaign), so I’m usually free to use whatever name I like.

I never thought about monster names and cultures before. Granted, in my games it’s not much of a concern, because the most monsters are just plain old orcs, goblins und kobolds and i think there is nothing wrong with everyone calling them that.
But i will certainly think about this, because it should add a lot of flavour if people have different names for the same monsters…