nameAbout Name Generator
Somewhere right now, a Dungeon Master is stalling for time because a player just walked into a tavern and asked the bartender's name. That pause is the reason this site exists.
Name Generator is a free collection of name generators for games, tabletop campaigns, fiction and worldbuilding — for every starship captain, sea witch and suspiciously friendly innkeeper who needs a name before the next sentence. There are just under a hundred of them, each built for its own niche rather than stamped out of one template.
Who makes this
Hi — I'm Sam Hollis, and I research, write and build everything on this site. Sam Hollis is the pen name I publish under; the email below reaches me directly, and I answer it myself.
This started as a hobby problem. I've been running and playing tabletop games for years — mostly Dungeons & Dragons around a kitchen table and on Roll20, with detours into Blades in the Dark when the party would rather steal something than stab it. On the screen side I've put an unreasonable number of hours into Baldur's Gate 3, Skyrim and Elden Ring — the last of which is largely responsible for how many hours I'll now spend on a character name before touching a stat block.
Every campaign hit the same wall. You need a name now, the existing tools hand you "Zxqthar," and the moment dies while everyone waits. So I started keeping naming notes per setting — how Old Norse patronymics actually work, why Khajiit honorifics carry meaning, what makes a cyberpunk handle read as a handle. Those notes became the generators here.
I'm not a linguist, and I don't pretend to be. What I do is read the naming conventions for a setting, build the filters around them, and say plainly where a generator follows real rules and where it is making plausible fiction. That distinction is on every page, and it is written down in the editorial policy.
Reach me at [email protected] — corrections, lore fixes and requests for new niches all land in the same inbox.
What makes our generators different
Plenty of name tools are a single button bolted to a pile of random syllables. Press it and you get "Zxqthar," which is technically a name the way a brick is technically furniture. We build ours one niche at a time, with bespoke filters — gender, style, role, name form, heritage — drawn from how each world actually names things. Old Norse names carry real patronymics and hard-earned bynames. Japanese names arrive with their meanings. Khajiit keep their honorifics, because they would absolutely notice if they didn't. Where a tradition has rules, we follow them, then mix authentic roots so every result is original and yours to keep.
How a generator gets built
Each one takes days, and the order matters: research the naming conventions first, design the filters around what that research turned up, then write the page explaining the rules so you can break them on purpose. A Viking generator that doesn't understand patronymics is just a syllable blender wearing a horned helmet. The full process — sources, review, corrections — is in the editorial policy.
Original artwork
Every generator has its own hero art, made specifically for that theme. Could we have used the same stock dragon for all of them and gone home early? Yes. We didn't, and we think you can tell.
Free and private
No sign-up, no account, no paywall, no "create a profile to see your name" nonsense. The generators run in your browser, and the names you make are yours — for fiction, tabletop games, video games, usernames, brands, secret villain identities, whatever — with no attribution required. The site is funded by advertising, which is why it can stay free and why nothing here is gated.
Get in touch
I'm always adding new generators and quietly improving the old ones. If you have a suggestion, a niche you would love to see, or a bug that needs a stern talking-to, the contact page is right there. I read everything — yes, even that one.
Last reviewed .