Fantasy Human Name Generator

Human names that feel familiar but not real

Humans are the hardest people to name in fantasy. Real names break the spell (nobody believes in a sword-saint called Kevin), but names that sound too alien stop feeling human. Our human grammar sits in between: its parts are shaped like the building blocks of real European names without copying any real list, so the results feel lived-in and new at the same time. A real name can turn up by chance, and that is fine. This page's list starts with Darow Tideholm, said DAH-row.

Three regions

• Northern names have a Germanic or Norse feel, with hard beginnings (Sig-, Hrol-, Wulf-, Ead-) and endings such as -ric, -mund, -hild and -wyn. Families carry English-style place names, clan names or the name of a village.
• Southern names sound Mediterranean, with open vowels and endings such as -ius, -ian, -ella and -ina. Southern families favour noble houses (of House plus an invented name) and towns.
• Coastal names have a Celtic lilt, with -wen, -enna, -ec and -ow, and family names that smell of salt: compounds of tide, gull, kelp or brine with a strand, a holm or a mouth.

Give each nation or province in your world one region's sound and keep to it. Readers will start to place characters by their names before you tell them where anyone is from.

Family names

Human family names come in five forms here: an English-style compound (Hartwell, Blackmere), of plus an invented town, of House plus a noble name, of Clan plus the same, and the coastal compounds. Each region uses its own three forms, and no single form takes more than four names in ten, so a list never turns into a parade of of Somewhere. The table below shows the parts each region uses.