One of the most important part of the identity of any fictional entity is it's name. As a person who likes to write myself, I have experienced how difficult it is to create a name that matches a person's origin, ethnicity, and character, all the while keeping it real and professional. Getting an appropriate name for anything, from a science fair project to a fictitious town in a story, is absolutely essential for it to appeal to the would-be audience.
The name of anything is a label presented to the outer world, and forms the very first impression one would have on something. If something becomes successful, it's name would be the thing that comes up the most when the world discusses it, like how 'Percy Jackson' and 'Harry Potter' has become household names in our time. Your fictitious character who likes to fight with a warhammer immediately becomes cooler if his hammer is named 'The Harbinger of Doom' as opposed to... Steel Bob or something.
This brings us to the point of this post, where I feature three online random name generators that can satisfy any and all name creation needs for anything at all, if you can't think up a good enough one yourself.
1. Listofrandomnames.com
This is a simple site, allowing you to choose the number of names to generate, the gender and whether to generate first names only or not. The unique feature this site offers is the ability to create alliterative names, i.e two words starting with the same sound.
However, I found that the names generated, especially the second names were mostly rare ones. This could be a exactly what some users would be looking for, but I found the absence of common names as a disadvantage.
However, this site is outdone by the one that follows, maybe except the alliteration bit.
2. Random-name-generator.info
This website generates names based on the US census database, ensuring weird and impossible names don't find their way in. This one also allows you to choose between male and female names, and have a separate tab for generating second names only. The unique feature present here is that you can choose how common your name should be, thus satisfying those on the hunt of prevalent as well as rare names.
This packs basically everything required for a person hunting for an American or British name for a fictional character.
However, the next website blows all it's competition straight outta the water:
2. Fantasynamegenerators.com
When I first entered this website, I was awed by it's sheer scale. This project of staggering proportions offers over 800 random name generators. That's right. Eight. Hundred.
The 'Fantasy names' has name generators for aliens, amazons, mermaids, dryads, griffins, dragons...and so much more. You name it, it's there. (See what I did there?)
The 'Real names' section not only allows you to generate the kind of names offered by the first two websites (With an added 'gender neutral' option), but also names suitable for hundreds of ethnic communities and cultures, including extinct ones like ancient Babylonian and Egyptian.
The 'Other names' is the biggest section yet, with name generators for fictitious fruits n' veggies, several kind of weapons, cities and districts, continents, galaxies and even dinosaurs!
But the generators don't end there. The name generators extend to 'pop culture', where you can generate possible names of characters set in popular fictional worlds, such as the ones of Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings and more.
The 'Description generator' takes it the next level, generating random descriptions for various things like diseases, pistols, gems and so on.
To conclude, this website might just be the ultimate source for any and all random generation needs, and the creator definitely requires to commended for creating and maintaining such a massive resource for free.
