I spoke with someone at the IRS who handles the 1041 forms, and he said that if you're filing an estate return for a deceased person, the Special Name Control is the first four letters of their last name. If the person is still alive, it's the first four letters of their first name. The conversation was very strange because the guy kept saying "they don't like us to talk about this, but..."
Anyway, like many people here I had to research and fix several things on the form 1041, and submit it multiple times before it finally went through. Sheesh!
