gizmobench

Druid Name Generator

This page opens the fantasy name generator on its Druid chip, so druid names are on screen before you touch anything, whatever style you last used here. Every draw on this style is a name inside a frame and never a bare word: Yarrowth Seedkeeper, Peatmoss of the Rowanth Grove, Nightshade, Bramblewatch of Vervain. The name itself is one of 44 stems that belong to this style and to no other of the 31, and nothing is ever added to it, no prefix, no ending, no second stem joined on, at any length. Where the elf and dragon sets are invented syllables, this one is mostly plain botany, which is why a druid name here reads as a growing thing rather than as a made-up sound. Seventeen of the 44 are ordinary English words for plants, fungi or fallen wood, used whole: hawthorn, quickthorn, nightshade, vervain, tamarisk, dogwood, cloudberry, sphagnum, inkcap, kingcup, reedmace, foxfire, gallnut, jackstraw, windfall, and peatmoss and bogmyrtle written as one word where a dictionary writes two. Most of the rest are a plant or a landscape word with a short ending on it: thirteen finish in wyn, wen or en, among them cairnwyn, gorsewyn, nettlewyn, alderwen and willowen, and rowanth, yarrowth, ashmoss, dellmoss, elmshade, fernlow, oakhar, birchale, lichenor, mistlethorn and thornmoor are built the same way. Only Juniva and Kelder read as coinages with no particular plant behind them, and Larkspar is a letter from larkspur. What the Length control changes is the frame rather than the word. Short has two shapes in about equal measure, a name with one of six titles behind it and a name of the something Grove. Medium has three, spread roughly evenly, and brings in the Circle. Long has two, the Circle form and the comma form, Dellmoss, Thornwarden of Elmshade. The grove or circle word is a second stem drawn from the same 44 and drawn again whenever it lands on the druid's own name, so nobody here is called Hawthorn of the Hawthorn Grove. The line under each name is a reading cue for the druid's own name alone, cut into syllables with the first in capitals, HAW-thorn or OR-chard-wyn, and the plain words around it are left out. Ask for up to 100 names a press, star the ones worth keeping, and type a seed word when you want the same circle back tomorrow. Nothing you type is uploaded and no account is asked for.

Building names

Style
Druid
Length

The chips choose the style, and each one is a different syllable set: Druid builds character names. Type a seed word to make a run repeatable, or leave it empty for a fresh set every press. The line under each name is a reading cue for the invented word the name is built on, cut at the joins the generator used.

A seed word makes a run repeatable. Type one and this style and length return the same names in the same order, on any machine, so a session you planned last week comes back unchanged. Leave it empty and every press draws fresh from the browser’s cryptographic generator. Nothing you type is uploaded, and we place no restriction on using the names you keep.

Common questions

Are these invented druid names or real plant names?
Mostly real plant names, and this style is the one where that is most worth knowing. The personal name is always one of 44 fixed stems with nothing added to it, so the word on screen is one the tool holds rather than one it assembled. Seventeen of those 44 are ordinary English words used whole: hawthorn, quickthorn, nightshade, vervain, tamarisk, dogwood, cloudberry, sphagnum, inkcap, kingcup, reedmace, foxfire, gallnut, jackstraw, windfall, and peatmoss and bogmyrtle run together. Most of the others are a plant or landscape word with a short ending on it, cairnwyn from cairn, gorsewyn from gorse, rowanth from rowan, elmshade from elm, and only Juniva and Kelder read as pure coinages. The hint under the tool talks about the invented word a name is built on, which fits the elf and dragon sets; on Druid the word is more often plain botany, and the reading cue treats it exactly the same way. What stays true across every style is the part the accuracy line makes: the list was written for this tool, no other of the 31 styles shares a stem with it, and no name here is copied from a published character list.
What does the Length control change for a druid name?
Not the length of the name. Seven of the 31 styles join more stems as you step up and Druid is not one of them: the druid's own name is a single stem at Short, Medium and Long, six to eleven letters, so Inkcap and Mistlethorn come out of the same setting as each other. What Length changes is the frame around it. Short has two shapes and they come up about equally, a name with a title behind it, Quickthorn Thornwarden, and a name of the something Grove, Kingcup of the Inkcap Grove. Medium has three, spread roughly evenly: it keeps both of those and adds the Circle, Orchardwyn of the Tamarisk Circle. Long drops the bare title and the Grove for two forms of about half the grid each, the Circle and a comma form that puts the title in the middle, Dellmoss, Thornwarden of Elmshade. Length is part of the draw rather than a filter over it, so the same seed word at a different length returns a different list rather than a trimmed one.
What are the six titles, and can I pick one?
The six are Keeper of the Green, Warden of Roots, Speaker of Rains, Thornwarden, Seedkeeper and Bramblewatch. They are written out rather than assembled, there is no picker for them, and over a few thousand names each one turned up about as often as the other five. Three are a single word and three are three words, and that matters at Long, where the title sits between the druid's name and a second stem: with a single-word title the line reads Dellmoss, Thornwarden of Elmshade, and with a three-word one it reads Reedmace, Speaker of Rains of Ashmoss, two ofs in a row. That shape lands on about a quarter of a Long grid. If it bothers you, work at Short or Medium, where the title always comes last, or star the Circle lines on Long instead.
Can I get a plain druid name with no title or grove behind it?
Not from this style. All four forms the three lengths draw on put a title, a Grove or a Circle around the name, so there is no setting that strips it. Two ways round that. The druid's own name is always the first word, and the reading cue under each name reads that word alone, so the cue tells you exactly which part to keep when you copy a line and cut the rest. Or step one chip sideways: every Short draw on the Tabletop chip is a bare one-word name, Ordal or Fable, and the Medieval chip gives a given name with a byname behind it, Sewell Tanner or Odgar Reeve, from their own stem lists.
How do I name the grove or the circle itself?
The word in front of Grove or Circle is a second stem from the same 44, so what you get is Rowanth Grove, Inkcap Grove or Vervain Circle: one plant word plus the word, which suits a mention in a line of dialogue. It is drawn again whenever it lands on the druid's own name, so a druid is never of the grove they are named after. For a place with more shape to it, the chips at the top of the stage build the surroundings: City gives settlements such as Sedgestead and Ravvenford Weald, Kingdom gives the realm around them, Kingdom of Torvalor or The Amber Kingdom of Halcymar, and Island gives isles and archipelagos.
Are there separate male and female druid names?
There is no gender switch on this page and the tool never labels a name. On this style that matters less than on most, because the stems are plants, fungi and landscape words rather than personal names, so Hawthorn, Sphagnum and Foxfire read as neither one nor the other and any of them can sit on any character. The six titles are the same: Keeper, Warden, Speaker, Seedkeeper and Bramblewatch carry no gender either. The way to work is to ask for a count of 40 or 50, let the grid fill and star what suits the character you have in mind.
Can I get the same druid names back tomorrow?
Type a word into the Seed word field. With a seed the names come from a small stream started by that word, so the same seed on the Druid chip at the same length returns the same names in the same order, on this machine and on anyone else's. Note the word down rather than the list and a table can rebuild it. Leave the seed empty and every press of Generate draws fresh from the browser's cryptographic generator, which cannot be replayed, and a seed of only spaces counts as empty. The Count field takes a whole number from 1 to 100: ask for none and the tool says to ask for at least 1, ask for more than 100 and it says 100 is the most one press can make, rather than quietly trimming the list.
How do I keep the druid names I like?
Every name in the grid has a star beside it. Press it and the name drops into a kept list under the tool with its style and its reading cue, and Copy kept puts that list on the clipboard, one name to a line. Press the star again to drop a name. Clicking a name copies that one name, Copy all copies the grid on screen, and pressing Generate again leaves what you kept alone, so you can draw several times and collect as you go. The kept list lives in this tab only and goes when you close it, which is the honest limit: copy anything you want before you leave. The length, count and seed word are remembered in this browser and the Start over button at the top of the page forgets them, but this page still opens on Druid whatever is remembered, because the page sets the style itself.
Will the same druid name come up twice in one grid?
Rarely, and the tool works against it: when a name it has already placed in this grid comes up again it draws again, up to sixteen times, before it accepts what it has. The room it has to work in is 2,156 possible names at Short, 4,048 at Medium and 13,244 at Long, which is why grids of 100 came back without a repeat at every length when this copy was checked against the tool. The personal name on its own is another matter, because there are only 44 of those: in grids of 100 about thirty of the 44 turned up twice or more inside different frames, one of them as often as seven times, so expect to meet Hawthorn again as a Circle line further down. Short is where the draw has least room, since the title form there has only 264 shapes to pick from.
Can I use one of these druid names in a game or a story?
We place no restriction on the names this page produces, and nothing here is licensed to you or withheld from you. The caution on this style is different from the invented ones: because most of the stems are ordinary plant words, a name such as Nightshade, Hawthorn or Foxfire is already in wide use as a character name, a band name and a trademark in places the tool cannot see. That is a question about the world rather than about this generator, so a name going on a cover is worth a search first. If you want a sound with no such history behind it, the styles built from invented syllables, Elf, Dragon, Demon and Orc among them, are one chip away in the same strip.

Every syllable set here is written for this tool and assembled by rule, so a name can land near a real one by chance but is never copied from a published character list. The pronunciation cue is built from the same syllables, so it is a reading aid rather than a claim about any language.