Generate names for fictional characters across any genre. Pick your setting, gender, and style — each result includes a vibe tag to spark the character in your head.
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There are three filters: Genre, Gender, and Style. Use one or all three, depending on your preference, to get names that fit your story.
Genre refers to the backdrop of your story. If your story is a work of Fantasy, then you will pull from the name pools that have been created for archaic and even mythic-sounding names. If your story is Science Fiction, then you will pull from pools that have created sharp and even abbreviated phonetics, the sounds of which convey a sense of technology. For stories that are set in the present (or near future), you will look to the pools of names that are typically found on college campuses today.
Historical fiction draws from pools of names for medieval and ancient European cultures, not artificially created names.
Horror stories can draw on a Gothic feel for bizarre and even unsettling names.
The Gender filter selects from male, female, or neutral name pools. You can choose "Any" in order to have each batch of generated names be a random mix of male, female, and neutral.
This is ideal for building a large cast of characters when you don't want to switch between these filters often.
Style tags (vibe tags) will also be assigned to each name. These can be of any of the five 'styles' or 'vibes' – see below. Again, set any of these to 'Any' and every name in the batch will have a randomly selected style from the five styles listed.
Each batch has 10 names. Press the spacebar (on desktop) or click Generate Names to get a fresh batch.
A character name needs to serve several purposes in relation to your story: it must fit within the world in which the story takes place, it must distinguish your character from all of the other characters in your story, it must be readable and not distract from the story itself, and finally it must carry some sense of the personality of the character to whom it belongs.
Short names with strong consonants are far easier to read and more easily remembered than long, unusual names. If you have a long name for your character, it is a good idea to choose a short, "nick-name" form that will be used in dialogue.
This ensures the reader doesn't have to keep reading your character's full name.
A name that contrasts with a setting is always interesting and, in most cases, will pull the reader out of the story. A "Kevin" in a high fantasy setting is jarring. An "Aelindra" in a gritty contemporary thriller is equally out of place.
The filters here match a writer's genre choice with a corresponding pool of names for that setting. However, contrasting a name with its setting can also be a very good thing. An ordinary name in an otherwise fantastical story can signify that the character is not of that world, and is thus an interesting choice for writer and reader alike.
When you're creating an ensemble of characters, ensure that each main character has their own distinct name that won't be easily confused with that of another major character.
Avoid starting the names of multiple characters with the same letter. Names that look similar when read quickly at a skim reading speed (e.g. Kael and Kale, Mira and Myra) should also be avoided by writers of long works of fiction. Keep a running list of all the characters and check for any possible name collisions as you add more characters to the list.
Tone for fantasy character names is usually established by creating names that fit within a particular phonetic syntax of your culture. Stick to a particular phonetic strategy and stay within bounds of that 'dialect' or 'language' for the culture. In cultures with many hard consonants (Dravon, Gareth, Valdris) a name such as Lyra feels out of place. For tons of further fantasy name options of specific cultures, see the Fantasy Name Generator.
Sci-Fi names often suggest a future that has evolved beyond our current ways of naming people. These names are often abbreviated, mashed together, or are similar to our current names but are slightly changed. For example, short names made up of unusual letter combinations such as Jax, Nyx, and Vex make strong protagonists because they're memorable.
Mixing very short names for a crew or ensemble cast is also very effective because it gives the reader something to immediately hang the character's personality and dialogue onto.
Avoid making names that are so foreign that the reader cannot determine any consistent sound in them, because these types of names will get skipped over during reading in favor of names that the reader can more easily process.
Using realistic names means they automatically hold a lot of cultural or class information that you wouldn't be able to get into a made-up name. So Aaron or Marcus read differently than Kai or Cael, even before you've said anything about them. Using the vibe tag for town guard, for instance, would get you to a different reading of the name Quinn than you'd get from reading the same name as belonging to a fallen noble.
When writing Historical Fiction, many of the names in your novel can do research work for you. A well-chosen name for a medieval European character can ground a reader in a specific time and place, within the first paragraph of the first chapter. I drew the name pools in this section from the real medieval European traditions: Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon, and Germanic.
If you are trying to recreate a very specific time and place, you can then layer on as much research as you like. If Historical Accuracy is primarily atmospheric in your game, fiction, or worldbuilding, then these pools will suffice.
For a horror story set in the modern era, use your horror name pool for main characters and your realistic name pool for secondary characters.
This creates an air of unease as readers struggle to reconcile the dignity of a character's full name with the monstrosity they see before them. Mix in some realistic names for your supporting cast as well to heighten the sense of unease.
So, this is a tool, and you should use it as such. It's not a character sheet, so please don't treat it like one. Instead, the vibe tag is a fast means to an end: to give you a feeling within a second or two of whether or not a paired name would be good for the character you've imagined. A bad pairing gives you just as much useful information as a good one.
This is useful in two ways: if the name and vibe tag seem to fit perfectly, the name is likely to fit well for the character you have in mind. But if the name and vibe tag don't seem to fit, that can be useful too — the name may be for a completely different character. For example, a name that went well with "war-hardened soldier" could actually be perfect for your village elder - perhaps he has a hidden past.
Writers use vibe tags a bit differently than game masters do in their adventures, but both use them for the same basic function. A novelist might use the vibe tag of a given name as the foundation for an entire backstory of the character (i.e., "cursed wanderer" leads to a 250-page novel), while the GM for a roleplaying game uses the tags to immediately begin the action of the first scene, with the full concept of the character being developed over the course of play.
Whether you're building a backstory from a vibe tag or just need a name that fits the moment, the goal is the same: find something that feels right for the character. If you're writing a novel with lots of characters, the Other Generators page has tools for fantasy-specific names and other things, including the Band Name Generator for fictional musicians in your story.
Yes, you can use all generated names in your published work. A quick web search for well-known characters who share a name could be wise to avoid confusion with an established character. There are plenty of characters out there, so it's worth a quick search before using.
The vibe tag provides a starting point for a character's personality. This could be something like 'Brooding Scholar' or 'War-Hardened Soldier'. The vibe tag provides enough context to get a feel for whether a name and a character would work well together. Use the vibe tag as a springboard rather than a strict, storybook-like set of rules.
For example, Fantasy names use archaic and mythic elements such as Henryk, Thrain, and Xarath. Meanwhile, Sci-Fi names are sharp and use short phonetic sounds to sound technological, like Zax, Grox, and Ky Adolf. Historical names come from real medieval European traditions, like Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian, so Beowulf, Grendel, and Conan the Barbarian would fall into the Historical genre. Finally, Horror names are Gothic and very formal, like Thorne Winterbottom, Godric Cooper, and Octavia Scrough.
To mix up all of the different genres, simply set the Genre filter to "Any". This will allow you to mix and match names from all of the different pools, which is very useful when you are trying to populate a large cast of characters.
Yes. These characters can be Male, Female, or Neutral. Flipping the Gender filter to "Any" will now ensure that each batch of names generated will contain a mixture of male, female, and neutral names. This can be particularly useful if you're creating a list of characters for a story and want variety in a single pass, rather than toggling the Gender filter on and off.
No AI is used here to generate names; only hand-picked lists of names can be filtered by genre and gender and thus are always quite readable and always fit the chosen genre.
Endless. Click as many times as you like. Every time you click, you'll get a new batch of 10 names. There's no limit to the number of names you can generate in a day. There's no wait. There's no paywall. Just keep clicking until a name in the batch resonates with you, and you can stop.