Fantasy name generator

What each style sounds like

Each style is a short set of rules: the sounds a syllable may open and close on, how long a name runs, and how it ends. That is why the names in a style sound related without repeating one another.

Elvish

Flowing: l, r, n, th, and open vowels, with soft endings.

Ynmarriel Miranor · Lethendir Ylthiel · Niel Yldir

Dwarvish

Short and heavy: clustered consonants that stop hard.

Mairnis Deepbrow · Broldor Coppervein · Krirhild Embershield

Orcish

Harsh: back vowels, g, k, z, and sh.

Zguarkuga of the Skull Spear · Doshug of the Blood Fang · Gozuga of the Iron Hand

Halfling

Homely: soft consonants and cozy, familiar endings.

Tomly Greenbutton · Falby Millbrook · Wiwyn Burrowleaf

Draconic

Long and sibilant: x, z, and s, with grand epithets.

Vunith the Pale Wing · Shukraeloth the Sleepless Wing · Kiskusith the Pale Storm

How I keep invented words in check

In the fantasy series I’m writing, The Fathom, every name has to pass one test: it should be phonetically easy to read. The places are Cortoris and Aorthis, and the people include Fayne and Kayaan. You can say each one on the first try and get back to the story.

Coined vocabulary is the harder call. J. R. R. Tolkien built languages first and let Middle-earth grow around them, and the depth that gives his world is something very few writers have matched. Brandon Sanderson, who writes some of the best opening lines on the fantasy shelf, fills his books with whole systems of their own terms. Still, when I read pages crowded with invented words, they start to feel like jargon and techno-babble to me. A word made up just to sound or look clever costs the reader more than it gives.

So I keep invented terms rare. Each arrives on its own, and the reader gets ample opportunity to learn it before the next one comes.

Inventing names of your own

• Give each people a sound. Pick a handful of consonants they use and a few they never do. Readers will hear the difference before they can say what it is.
• Make it sayable. If you stumble reading it aloud, so will every reader, and an audiobook narrator will choose a pronunciation for you.
• Spend apostrophes sparingly. One mark that means something in your world is worth more than three that decorate.
• Check for accidents. An invented name can turn out to be a real word, a brand, or a famous character's name. Search it once.

Keep the names you settle on in a People sheet in Tabularia, so the spelling you chose in chapter two is the one you use in chapter twenty. A name with a sheet also stops being underlined by the spellchecker. The Sheets guide shows how.

Other versions

• Character name generator
• French name generator