Guild Name Generator

Common questions

Are these guild names invented, or are they real English words?

They are real words, and on this style that is worth saying out loud. The 44 core words are English trade and street words or compounds of two, Undercroft, Ropewalk, Millrace, Inkwell, Dovecote and Yeomanry among them, and a few, Eastgate and Ropewalk, are real street names in English towns. Each is drawn whole rather than assembled from syllables. The eight collective nouns, the eight trades, Cartwright, Glazier, Apothecary, Stonecutter, Netmender, Bookbinder, Ropewalker and Saltmaker, the eight emblems, Brass, Willow, Anvil, Quill, Harrow, Kestrel, Wheel and Tallow, and the eight mottoes are plain English too. The tool arranges these words rather than drawing names from a published character list, and no other style shares these 44 core words. The practical consequence is the one worth planning around. Because the parts are ordinary English, a draw can land on something a real company, a real street or a real trade guild is already called, which a string of invented syllables rarely does. Search a name before you trade or publish under it.

How do I get a short guild name?

Work at Short. About half of a short draw is the two-word form, a core word and a collective noun: Ironrow Guild, Undercroft League, Kegmarket Fellowship. Those run from 13 to 22 characters. The other half is the trade form, The Netmender Guild of Vintnerlane, which runs from 28 to 41. There is no setting that returns the two-word form alone, so the way to work is to ask for a count of 30 or 40, let the grid fill, star the short ones and take them away with Copy kept. If what you want is a tag for a gaming clan rather than the name of a trade hall, step one chip sideways: Clan builds names such as Oakenvow Pactline and can hang a short bracketed tag off them, [PACT], and Community builds names for a server or a group, Pixel Outpost or The Cozy Outpost. Each of those chips owns its own words, so the sound changes with the grammar.

What does the Length control change for a guild name?

Not the size of the core word. The Guild chip draws exactly one core word at Short, Medium and Long, joins no second word to it and attaches no ending, so Ironrow is Ironrow at every setting. What changes is the frame around it. Short has two forms in roughly equal measure, the bare Kegmarket Fellowship and the trade form The Cartwright Company of Loomgate. Medium has three, about a third each, adding the emblem form The Company of the Quill Netmenders. Long has two and the bare form is not one of them, so every long draw is a long name, and about half of them end on a motto. Length is part of the draw rather than a filter over it, which is why the same seed word at a different length returns a different list rather than the same one trimmed.

Can I get a guild motto as well as a name?

Yes, at Long. One of the two long forms ends on a motto and it lands on about half of a long grid: The Bookbinder Order of Inkwell, Fair Weight, or The Saltmaker Company of Saltgate, By Rope and Rivet. The bank holds eight, Measure Twice, By Rope and Rivet, Nothing Wasted, Steady Hands, Paid in Full, Made to Last, Quiet Work and Fair Weight, and they are written as plain English rather than assembled, which is why the reading cue under a name leaves them alone. Short and Medium never draw one. If you want a motto on most of the grid, work at Long and star the names that carry one.

Can I use one of these names for a game guild, a Discord server or a business?

We place no restriction on the names this tool produces: the words are written into the page, the assembly is a rule in the page, and neither is licensed to you or withheld from you. What the tool cannot tell you is whether a name is already taken, in a trademark register, in a game where a guild name has to be unique on the realm, or on the sign of a business in a town that names its trade companies the same way. That is a question about the world rather than about the generator, and this style needs the check more than the invented-syllable styles do, because its parts are ordinary English trade words. One measurement helps where a name has to fit a field with a character cap: a long draw here runs from about 30 to about 60 characters, so The Ropewalker League of Yeomanry, Fair Weight is a banner line, while the two-word form at Short runs from 13 to 22 characters and fills about half a short grid.

Can I get the same guild names back tomorrow?

Type a word into the Seed word field and the run becomes repeatable: the same seed on the Guild chip at the same length returns the same names in the same order, on this machine and on anyone else's, so the list you drew for a session last week comes back instead of being lost to the next press. Note the word down rather than the list. Leave the seed empty and every press 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 any 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. A name that has already gone into the grid is drawn again, so a grid of 100 comes back without repeats.

What is the small line under each guild name?

It is a reading cue for the core word and for nothing else in the name: the frame, the trade, the emblem and the motto are left out rather than guessed at. Each of the 44 core words carries a written reading, cut where its English parts meet and into syllables inside a longer part, with the first syllable in capitals: MILL-race, AN-vil-court, UN-der-croft, STONE-wharf. No letter is respelled, and on this style the cue mostly confirms a word you could already read, which is not true on the styles that invent one.

How do I keep the guild 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 per 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 what you want before you leave. The style, length, count and seed word are remembered in this browser and the Start over button at the top of the page forgets them, and this page still opens on Guild whatever is remembered, because the page sets the style itself. Nothing is uploaded and no account is asked for.

Can I name an adventuring party or a mercenary company with this?

Yes. The collective words in this set are the ones a party or a company takes, Order, Company, League, Fellowship, Chapter, Syndicate, Consortium and Guild, so a draw such as Anvilcourt Fellowship or The Company of the Brass Kegmarket names a band of adventurers as readily as a trade hall. Short is where the two-word form comes up, 13 to 22 characters, which fits on a character sheet; Long can add a motto, Steady Hands or Paid in Full, for a banner. If you want the group to sound less like a trade, the Clan chip builds names around an emblem, The Crimson Bloodoak, and Code name gives an operation-style pair.