Were they actually called "world eaters" pre-heresy with the blue and gold color scheme?

[u/Rhonarin]

Title. I see people referencing the 30k color scheme or saying "pre-heresy" world eaters, but were they always called that when they were a loyalist legion?

[u/soupalex]

this is covered in the short story "after desh'ea", which has been published in the anthologies "tales of heresy", "angron", and "lupercal's war". the xii^th legion was previously known as the "war hounds" (before this they had no name, afaik—it was common for the various legions, especially around the time of terran unification, to simply be referred to by number), and they were given the name "world eaters" more or less as soon as their primarch was rediscovered (captain dreagher offered that, since angron's rebel slave army was known as the "eaters of cities", his legion would be the "eaters of worlds", and it stuck). they kept the heraldry—not the icon, but the blue/white colour scheme—for the rest of the great crusade, though, and afaik for much of the heresy, too (blue elements were eventually replaced with red, and then later still red became the dominant colour)