Names and ideas for anything and everything

Random Name Generators (and Lists) for Everything

Any of us might need to come up with a name or word for something on a moment's notice: a project for school or work; a book title; a boat; a place; a fictional person; a common name or word from the 1800s; a name with a particular meaning or symbolism; a business; even a child or pet. This page is meant to help with such things.

• Modern names

• Historical names

• Fantasy names

• More specific types/genre names

• Book titles

Modern names

• Generate Personal Identity information online basically helps you create a fictious persona to use for things like software testing, or privacy reasons. It can also be a quick and dirty way to come up with a new fictional character at random in that story you're writing. However, keep in mind that using this type of info to register at web sites and the like is at the least frowned upon, and will usually put you into violation of their terms of use. At worst, it could be illegal to do this at some web sites online.

• Generate a Random Name - Fake Name Generator creates random identities too, but with lots more details than the preceding link. It can also produce fake names specialized to a particular country.

  I sometimes use baby naming web sites to seek out names for story characters. But the article below has lots of great info for boosting name creativity, as well as 'dating' names to appropiate eras and age groups.

• How to Name a Baby

• Namehunter is an interactive generator that takes various inputs from you to influence what names it generates.

• Generate a character name and personality touts itself as being good for online role playing games, and says you can select a name based on various world regions, ethnicities, and historical time periods. The site claims that it's statistically accurate about the personality types it provides, based on your input.

• English Baby Boys Names | English Male Names and Meanings

• Behind the Name: Meaning of Names, Baby Name Meanings (includes names from many countries!) also provides Meaning of Surnames and a random generator.

• Boy Names and Girl Names from all over the world

Historical names

• NameVoyager: Baby Name Wizard Graph of Most Popular Baby Names by year

• Name Age Calculator allows you to estimate how old someone probably is based solely on their name.

• Google Ngram Viewer (name/phrase dater) allows you to enter a given name or phrase to see how frequently it appeared in texts throughout a particular range of history.

• List of most popular given names today, by world region - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• Baby Name Lists - Nature, Place And Word Names offers up baby name suggestions from various sources including words which can mean a particular kind of animal, biblical location, baby birds, New York city landmarks, celestial names (constellations, stars, etc.), holiday-related, colleges, colors, acceptable days and months, flowers, fruits, French and Italian words, inspirational, jewels, minerals, metals, and lots more. If you're looking for an unusual and/or intriguing name that's likely to be rarely run across on the street, this is the place for you.

• Popular Baby Names by decade or state (from today back through the 1880s); the link The most popular baby names given each year to boys and girls in the United States from 1880 to the present seems to derive from the first site, info-wise.

• 1000 Most Popular Names of the 1890s

• Victorian era names (circa 1840s-1890s)

• Medieval English Names

• Medieval Favourites - British Baby Names

• A selection of interesting Medieval Names

• Renaissance and Regency Rummage Repository: Regency era names.

• List of biblical names - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fantasy names

• Fantasy name generators. Names for all your fantasy characters isn't kidding. But it's also not telling you that this site may be the reigning champion of fantasy names generation online, with categories ranging from characters to places to monsters. So if you're writing fantasy, this is a resource you ignore at your peril (for your competitors surely won't). In addition to all that, the site also provides a wealth of modern names, drawn from many countries; names related to popular films, video games, and books; mythological creatures; and places and planets both modern and ancient. Seriously speaking, many of us may never need another source of names other than this one (it's that good).

• Seventh Sanctum describes itself in this manner: a collection of "...random generators of ideas, from story concepts to science fiction weapons to extremely silly spells." And this means generators not just for general concepts, but very specific ones too, like corporation names and magic spells and equipment. Basically Seventh Sanctum may supply whatever names and ideas that none of the other links on this page do.

Specific types/genre names

• OneLook's reverse dictionary lets you describe a concept and get back a list of words and phrases related to that concept.

• Words used to describe facial expressions - synonyms and related words | Macmillan Dictionary

• MASTER LIST of Facial Expressions for Writers! – Bryn Donovan

• 100 Words for Facial Expressions

• Common Facial Expressions and Their Meaning (with Pictures) - EnkiVeryWell

• 50 Hairstyles For Girls

• List of hairstyles - Wikipedia

• Parts of clothes - synonyms and related words | Macmillan Dictionary

• List of human positions

• Architectural Styles | Historic Home Styles | Residential Architecture Facts & History

• "I Need A Name For My Town/City!" - Help Coming Up With Names For Fictional Towns And Cities - Springhole.net

• Random US Cities

• Fake North American City Name Generator

• Location & Setting Generators - Springhole.net

• Name sampling of many nations: List of teams and cyclists in the 2017 Tour de France

• Baby names from 16 languages to help you name your baby

• Random Japanese Name Generator - Springhole.net

• See How Popular Your Name Will Be in the Future

• Top 100 weird pet names of 2014

• List of landforms - Wikipedia (Geological feature names and terms)

• Natural Terrain Feature Name Generator

• Realtime map of boat and ship traffic shows real life names of vessels

• Startup Ideas Generator

• Nonsense word generator

• RANDOM.ORG - True Random Number Service

• Writer Creates “Color Thesaurus” To Help You Correctly Name Any Color Imaginable

• Random Names for Clothing, Shoe, and Jewelry Stores

• Parts of boats and ships - synonyms and related words | Macmillan Dictionary

• A list of reasons for admission to a lunatic asylum in the 1800s (to use as you see fit)

Unpronounceable, or Lovecraft-style names/words:

• Seventh Sanctum - Lovecraftian Name Generator

• Miskatonic River Press Lovecraft Country Name Generator

• Lovecraftian name generator

• donjon; Weird Name Generator

• Fantasy Name Generator - medium "Lovecraftian" names

• For some reason rumandmonkey.com offers both The Horrible Lovecraftian Monster Name Generator and The Lovecraftian Monster Name Generator

Book titles

• Book Title Generators

• Random Book Title Generator

• Book title name generator

• Fantasy Novel Title Generator

Still more naming possibilities may be found in the links listed below: