Dark Elf Name Generator

Dark elves, from a Norse note to a naming system

The oldest written dark elves are not a game people. In the Prose Edda, Snorri Sturluson has High name two elven kinds. The ljósálfar, the light elves, live in Álfheimr. The dökkálfar, the dark elves, live down in the earth, unlike the light elves in looks and still more in nature. Brodeur's 1916 translation puts it in one pair of lines: the light elves are fairer to look upon than the sun, and the dark elves are blacker than pitch. Snorri gives no personal names. The passage is under Sources.

Every syllable on this page is ours. Lighter elves, in high, wood and dark styles, are on the elf name generator.

Shadow, ember and nightborn

A name is a beginning, sometimes a middle, and an ending for gender. Stress falls just before the last syllable: Lyssoth the Patient is said LIS-soth. Two vowels may stand together, never three, and th appears once at most.

• Shadow is sleek and sibilant, built on s and sh. Feminine names lean to -ine, -isse and -aela; masculine names to -ael, -ion and -yth.
• Ember is warmer. Z and v sit beside open a and o, coals rather than silk. Endings such as -aza and -yzen belong here.
• Nightborn uses n, m, l and y, and stays soft, a name said quietly.

One style per house is enough. A second style marks someone the house took in.

House names and epithets

Each dark elf here carries one extra name, never two. A house is House of plus an invented word of five to seven letters, from a small grammar of its own. A compound is the other family form: two words of ours joined, a wick, pearl or clove against silk, veil, moss or thorn. An epithet is the plus one word, such as the Unlit or the Seventh. It marks a person, not a family, so it never follows House of. If a story needs both, speak the epithet and write the house.

The lists below split the pieces: feminine given names, masculine given names, and house names alone. The opening name on this page is Lyssoth the Patient.