gizmobench

Wizard Name Generator

This page opens the generator on its Wizard style, so wizard names are on screen before you touch anything, whatever style you last used here. The wizard corpus is 44 stems written for this style and shared with no other, covering every letter of the alphabet, and they are joined smoothly: a seam that would double a letter, put two vowels together or stack three consonants is thrown back and another piece drawn. About one name in six takes the prefix ar or wy, and about half take one of the five endings, us, ius, ard, wyn or oth, which is how kesten becomes Kestenius and nocturn becomes Nocturnoth. The invented word is a single stem at every setting, four to twelve letters with its trimmings, so Length is not a size dial here: it changes the grammar instead. Short gives a bare name or a name with a title, Vandry or Kestenwyn the Lanternbearer. Medium adds the comma form, Jorvan, Walker of Glass Roads. Long drops the bare name, so every wizard arrives with a title or a specialty. The eight titles and eight specialties are written out rather than assembled, and the reading cue under each name covers only the invented word, cut at the joins the generator made. Up to a hundred names a press, a star to keep the ones you want, a seed word to make the run repeatable, and nothing you type leaves the browser.

Building names

Style
Wizard
Length

The chips choose the style, and each one is a different syllable set: Wizard 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

Where do the titles and epithets come from, and can I get a plain name instead?
They come from two short lists written for this style, and the tool does not invent the words in them. Eight titles come after the word the, as in Kestenwyn the Lanternbearer: Unbound, Ninefold, Ashenhand, Farseeing, Lanternbearer, Greymantled, Wakeful and Threadbare. Eight specialties follow a comma: Reader of Tides, Warden of Cinders, Keeper of Hours, Binder of Storms, Walker of Glass Roads, Speaker to Ravens, Shaper of Salt and Counter of Stars. Only the name in front of them is assembled. Which shape a draw takes depends on Length: Short picks between a bare name and a title, so about half the grid arrives undecorated, Medium picks among bare, title and specialty, and Long has no bare form at all, so every name there carries one or the other. For plain names, use Short or Medium and star the ones that arrive without a title.
How do I get the same wizard names back tomorrow?
Type a word into the Seed field. With a seed the names come from a small stream started by that word, so the same seed with the Wizard style and the same length returns the same names in the same order, on this machine and on any other. Note the word down and the run is reproducible, and you can hand a table the seed word rather than the list. 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 style, length, count and seed word are remembered in this browser, and the Start over button at the top of the page forgets them.
What does the Length control change for a wizard name?
Not the size of the invented word. Seven of the styles join more stems as you step up, and Wizard is not one of them: the word is built from a single stem at Short, Medium and Long, four to twelve letters once an optional prefix and ending are counted, so a short Alba and a long Wynocturnoth come out of the same setting as each other. What Length changes is the grammar around it. Short draws a bare name or a name with a title. Medium can also produce the comma form, a name followed by a specialty such as Binder of Storms. Long keeps only the two decorated shapes. Length is part of the draw rather than a filter on it, so the same seed at a different length gives a different list rather than a trimmed one.
What is the small line under each name?
It is a reading cue for the invented word, in that word's own letters, cut at the joins the generator actually made, with one syllable in capitals for stress. Kestenius reads kes-ten-IUS and Arcalyx reads ar-CA-lyx, because the capitals fall where the second part begins; a name built from one piece alone, such as Wessel, is marked on its first syllable, WES-sel. The plain words are left out rather than guessed at, so Jorvan, Walker of Glass Roads is read back as JOR-van and nothing else. No letter is ever respelled, which is what keeps the cue a reading aid instead of a claim about how any language would say the word.
Is the wizard list actually different from the other styles?
The stems are. All 44 of them belong to this style and appear in no other, so a wizard name cannot fall out of the elf or orc corpus and neither of those can produce one of these. A few short endings are shared trimmings across styles, ard, oth and us among them, but they are never the stems that make the body of a name. The shape differs as well: the wizard set is joined smoothly, the way the elf set is, so it refuses a seam that stacks consonants, while the orc and dragon sets keep the collision. The plain words on top come from this style's own banks as well, eight titles and eight specialties written for wizards, though a handful of their words are not exclusive: Ninefold also sits in the superhero bank, Warden in the dragon, druid and knight banks, Keeper and Speaker in druid's, Glass in kingdom's, and Salt in both kingdom's and demon's.
Are there separate names for witches, sorceresses or a female wizard?
There is no gender switch on this page. The stems are sounds rather than words and nothing in the set marks a name as one or the other, so generate a batch and take the ones that suit the character. What most readers hear is the ending: us and ius read as masculine in the usual fantasy convention and wyn reads softer, but the tool claims none of that and does not sort the list. There is no separate witch style here. The closest neighbours are one chip away at the top of the stage: Druid for a wilder practitioner, Fairy for something lighter, Demon and Vampire for something darker.
Can I use one of these wizard names in a game or a book?
We place no restriction on it. The stems were written for this tool and the assembly is a rule that runs in the page, so nothing here is taken from a published character list, and no name is licensed to you or withheld from you. What the page cannot tell you is whether a particular string is already a trademark or a known character somewhere, because that is a question about the world and not about this generator. A name can land near a real one by chance, since there are only so many ways to arrange these sounds, so a name you plan to put on a cover is worth a search before you commit to it. The accuracy line under the tool is the full statement of that.

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.