Fantasy name generator
This fantasy name generator builds names instead of reciting them. Pick the kinds you want and it will build you some. Every name is assembled from syllables, not drawn from a list, so it doesn’t run out and it does not hand you somebody else’s character.
Choose traditions, length or first letter (optional)
Suggestions, nothing more. These are built from our own syllable banks, not taken from any game’s published material: no faction, chapter, deity or character names appear here, and Brush & Paint has no connection to Games Workshop or Wizards of the Coast. Whatever you play, the name is yours to use. These patterns reach 114,555 distinct names. It will not run out.
Using the fantasy name generator as a DnD name generator
Most people arriving here are about to sit down at a table and need a name in the next ten seconds. Pick the tradition that matches the character (elven for the long musical ones, dwarven for something blunt with a trade in the surname, orcish for something you can shout across a room) and take the first one that makes you sit up. If a name is nearly right, generate again and steal a syllable from the next batch.
It works as a name generator for any system, not just one, because it isn’t built from any system’s published material. There are no chapter names here, no faction names, no deities and no characters out of anybody’s rulebook. Every name is put together from syllables written for this page, which is also why it can keep going: the tool counts its own reachable combinations underneath the results, and the number is not small.
What makes a name survive a campaign
A character name gets said aloud far more than it gets read. That has consequences the generator can’t decide for you.
- Say it out loud first. If you stumble, so will everyone else, and by session four they will have shortened it to one syllable anyway. Pick the shortening you can live with.
- Watch the apostrophes. They look right on a character sheet and land badly in speech, where they can't be heard properly.
- Two syllables travel. Long names are fine on paper and get trimmed at the table; short ones stay as written.
- Leave room to grow. An epithet earned in play beats one chosen in session zero, so it is worth taking the plain name now and adding "the Unquiet" when the character has done something to deserve it.
Fantasy last names and surnames
A surname tells the table where a character comes from before anyone asks. This generator builds them three ways, and you can borrow the method for your own.
Human surnames here sound like somewhere on an English map, because most real ones started that way: a given name such as Bren or Hal joined to an ending like -ford, -combe, -thorpe or -well, the old words for a river crossing, a valley, a farmstead and a spring. Dwarven surnames sound like a trade or a place underground, built from a hard opening and an ending such as -forge, -helm, -stone or -vault. The third kind is an epithet or a place of origin, "of" plus somewhere, which suits a character with no family worth naming.
To make a fantasy surname by hand, pick the ending first, because it carries the meaning, then put a short, blunt syllable in front of it. Say the full name aloud with the first name before you commit: two long halves together are a mouthful at the table.
Naming a figure you have already painted
Sometimes the model comes first. A finished miniature usually tells you which tradition it belongs to before you have thought about it (the colours, the pose, whether the face is calm or furious) so generate against what you’re looking at, not against the character sheet.
When the name and the figure agree, the next thing worth doing is photographing it properly. The photography guide covers light, focus and background, and the scene studio will put the finished figure somewhere that suits the name. We print your own artwork and your own photographs; we do not print lettering, so the name stays with the character instead of going on a product.
Named them? Now put them on the wall
Upload a photo of the painted figure. Choose Create a scene and AI redraws it in a setting of its own, or print the photo as it is. You see it before you pay, and it goes in your basket from here.
This fantasy name generator builds, not recites. Each tradition below owns a set of patterns, and the patterns draw on syllable banks, so the names come out of a combination instead of off a list somebody else wrote. That’s the difference between a tool that runs out after forty suggestions and one that does not.
What this fantasy name generator actually does
Nothing here is taken from any published setting. No faction, chapter, deity or character name appears in any bank, by design and by a check that enumerates every name the patterns can reach and fails the build if one of them is.
Pick one tradition for a consistent set, or several to see them side by side. The count under the results is computed from the banks themselves, not asserted, so it is not a marketing number.
Questions and answers
Can I use these names in D&D or another system?
Yes, in any of them. The names are assembled from our own syllables and belong to no published setting, so nothing here is anybody else’s to object to. Brush & Paint is not affiliated with Wizards of the Coast or Games Workshop.
Will it give me the same name twice?
Not within a batch: a drawn name isn’t repeated. Across batches it can, but the reachable combinations are counted under the results and the number is large enough that it is unlikely.
Can you print the name on something?
No. This site prints your own artwork and photographs of models you painted, not lettering, so there is no name print here. The name is for the character; the print is of the figure.
Where do the names come from?
Syllable banks written for this page, combined by per-tradition patterns. Nothing is copied from another generator or from any game’s published material.