What is the origin of the old Beyond boss names?

So, I am a pretty old time player and recently I have had a thought:
What is the origin of the old beyond boss names?
These had been around since very early on in the game and although time had worn down their importance and threat they still have an important place in my memories of times long passed. To this day, the name Abaxoth just evokes something in me.
And I want to know. Was it just random syllables that eventually sounded right? Were these based on english words then twisted. Or words in other languages? A combination of the three, or something else entirely? I have been unable to find anything on google and hence I try to post here.

I think the odds are slim this will work but oh well, I will give it a shot. I pasted the names and titles below to refresh anyone's memory.

Abaxoth, the End of All That Is

Bameth, Shifting Darkness

Ephij, Crackling Sky

Haast, Unrelenting Frost

Na'em, Bending Stone

Tzteosh, Hungering Flame

So all of this is just my own connections and conjecture;

As to the foremost, I've assumed Abaxoth is a take on Abraxas, a gnostic demon of an extremly high order. Abraxas original name was formed by using a letter to represent each heavenly body, and has been attributed as being the ruler of the 365 different heavens (don't ask, Gnosticism is wierd, but it's a big deal). The Catholic church branded it as a demon (like they did with most psudodeities outside of their faith's concepts they didn't rebrand as an angel). Most images of Abraxes is that of a man with snakes for legs (head and all). The big reason I always went to the Abraxas reference (aside the similar spellings) is we know of him mostly from some old religous practice which his devotees would create "Abraxas Stones", carving his name or image into stones or gems (a thing common in Path).

Bringing us to Bameth, I assume is a reference to Baphomet (often equated to satan in christian mythology and modern Mystism). Uused as a major symbol of the Knight's Templar to sort of represent the balance between loyal faith, practical politics, and occutlism, and has been used as both a mark of enlightenment and heidonism, depending on who you ask. That said, it's a looser connection, though the Div card from him (Lord in Black) does give me big Alister Crowley vibes (who is the person who largely merged the deities of Baphomet and Satan into being a single entity in the public eye.

The other four I don't have much. The names don't hook up neatly with any of the mythologies I know of. A basic look around lead me to find that Haast is a town in New Zealand, but I couldn't find any of the other names in a similar form for the others on the list I dug up, but I'm far from an expert in 'locations in New Zealand', and it could instead be names from nearby areas like Australia or the wider polyneisan islands. Ephji might be intended to be proununced like 'Fiji'? I found one island that maybe inspired Na'em, but it's pretty different looking, and I have no idea how the island was supposed to be pronounced right. Colonalism also makes it harder, as I'm not studied enough in the topic to know what some of these areas where called by the native populations when their colonal names are what stuck on maps and google searches.

My last theroy is more in line with Moari mythology. I know they used a lot of those gods to inspire some of their Karui lore, and GGG does like to use Maroi and New Zealand stuff when they can. I do know the Maroi mythology has a LOT of mythical figures, and I only know of two, and those are bascially surface level stuff. But if you're looking to do some digging, I might start there.

Of course, the possibility that someone just smashed out some letters and tweeked them to sound right might just be the boring old truth. A lot of cool names come from just random letters. And given that the original Beyond models where just "dudes, but bloody" might suggest it was done on the quick.

Lots of monsters are inspired by the work of H.P Lovecraft and movies like In the Mouth of Madness.

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Northern_Ronin wrote:

So all of this is just my own connections and conjecture;

Thank you for the awesome post. 👍

Not OP; but I was curious too, and that was a very interesting read. In some ways I hope we aren’t given an official answer - sometimes the mystery is more fun than the explanation.

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Sarno wrote:

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Northern_Ronin wrote:

So all of this is just my own connections and conjecture;

Thank you for the awesome post. 👍

Not OP; but I was curious too, and that was a very interesting read. In some ways I hope we aren’t given an official answer - sometimes the mystery is more fun than the explanation.

Well I'm always eager to put on the wizard hat and get the conspiracy stringboard and go full Pepe Siliva on PoE lore. And to a point I agree, I've always loved PoE's looser story telling, but I don't mind an aswer after a few years of being able to poke at the obscure world building.

Bonus a Unique added this league is referenced in a heist target!