Fantasy Character Name Generator
Names for heroes, villains and everyone they meet on the road. It opens on elven names. Switch the style to give a character a people and a homeland: Nordic, Celtic, Slavic, dwarven, orcish, draconic and more.
Elven: flowing and old.
A name says where someone is from
In most fantasy worlds a family name is the name of a place or a trade: someone's grandfather lived by the ford, or kept the hounds. That's why the family names here often sound like towns. Use that. If your rogue's surname is the same as a ruined village on your map, you have a backstory without writing one.
Pick the style from the character's homeland, not their personality. A sailor from a Nordic coast gets a Nordic name even if she's gentle. Players will remember a name that fits the map far longer than one that only fits the mood.
Names for a whole cast
Generate one batch per culture and draw the whole cast from it. A village where everyone's names come from the same list feels like a real community. Vary the length and the first letter across the main cast, so that no two important characters can be confused when a player skims the page.
Villains and rulers can carry a second name or a title. Take a short given name from the list and add something they earned: Moss the Quiet, Bear of Steepcairn. A name the character chose for themselves says something about them too.
Names are the start
Make the whole world: a map, its peoples, its magic and a villain with a plan. The free world generator names its towns and regions with this same engine, in the style you choose.
In the World Studio you build a world on a real map, set its rules in plain words and invite players. An AI game master voices every character while the game engine keeps the map, the fights and the money honest.
More name generators
Questions
- Does the generator make male or female names?
- Neither in particular. The names are built from place names, which have no gender, so any name here can belong to anyone. If you want a name to read as one or the other, endings help in most styles: -a and -e endings tend to read as feminine, hard consonants as masculine.
- Why does a character sometimes get only one name?
- About one name in four comes out as a single name. Plenty of characters go by one name, and you can always pair it with a family name from another result.
- Which style should I use for a human character?
- Nordic or Slavic for a northern people, Imperial for an old southern empire, Desert or Steppe for caravan and horse peoples. Common tongue and Old English names sound like English places, so they make better family names than given names.
Names are generated with a port of the names generator from Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator (MIT license, by Max Haniyeu), including its name lists.