How to Create Sci-Fi Names

Start with how astronomers name things

Real astronomy has naming systems, and using them makes a setting feel researched:

• Bayer designations, introduced in 1603, give bright stars a Greek letter and their constellation: Alpha Centauri, Beta Orionis. Our Star Name Generator builds invented ones like Upsilon Ostrandi.
• Catalogue numbers name everything else. Most stars are known by a survey code, which is why UXT 16805 A sounds real: the letter marks one star of a pair.
• Exoplanets take their star's name plus a lower-case letter, starting with b: 51 Pegasi b was the first found orbiting a Sun-like star.
• Official names are approved by the International Astronomical Union.

A mix works well: a catalogue code for the scientists, and a nickname for everyone else.

Naming planets and colonies by who founded them

The quickest way to decide a colony's name is to ask who got there first. Different founders name places very differently.

• Surveyors use catalogue codes, because they're naming thousands of worlds: KTS-88 e is the fifth object found around its star, the way real exoplanets are lettered.
• Settlers name places after home, after themselves, or after what they hope for: Second Lagos, Adebayo's Promise, Kincaid's Crossing. Earth's own colonies did exactly this, from New York to Nova Scotia. Try the colony style of the Planet Name Generator.
• Companies number their sites, and the name tells you nobody planned to stay: Claim Block 204E, Castlemaine Worksite 27.
• Generation ships, where the settlers were born on the voyage, name the new world after the only home they knew: Mess Hall Vale, Slow Boat Ground, Children of the Sleeping Lark. Try the Colony Name Generator.

Most colonies have more than one name: the catalogue code on the charts, the founders' name on the sign, and the nickname everyone actually uses. Moons get the same treatment. The people who see one every night might call it The Drowsy Thimble, from the Moon Name Generator.

Naming ships and fleets

Navies have naming traditions that last for centuries. The Royal Navy has a long line of ships named after virtues, such as Victory, Illustrious and Invincible, and the US Navy names many aircraft carriers after presidents and submarines after states. Sci-fi fleets can borrow three habits from them.

• A prefix for the owner. HMS means His (or Her) Majesty's Ship and USS United States Ship. Invented prefixes do the same job: CSV Redemption, UES Courier, from the registry style of the Spaceship Name Generator.
• A class named after its first ship. A class of ships usually takes the name of the first one built: the Royal Navy's Type 45 destroyers are the Daring class, after HMS Daring. Give a class a theme and name every ship to match: a virtue class of Fortitude, Constancy and Restraint.
• Different names for different jobs. Warships get virtues; merchant ships get names their owners like, such as Lonely Heron or The Far Promise; and ships with a sense of humour get whole sentences, a style made famous by Iain M. Banks's Culture novels: Wipe Your Feet.

Stations follow the same logic, named for their job or their sponsor: Rahimi Observatory, Waystation Saffron, from the Space Station Name Generator.

Naming alien species and their languages

An alien species usually needs two kinds of name: what humans call it, and what it calls itself. Linguists call these an exonym and an endonym; Germany and Deutschland are the same country seen from outside and inside. Your aliens can have the same gap, and the gap can be a story.

Then give each species its own sounds, and keep to them:

• A hive species might click, with an apostrophe standing for the click: Sk'trix, Ts'zek. Use the apostrophe for a reason, not decoration.
• An ocean species might use long vowels and soft consonants: Liowae, Halwaro.
• A species of energy beings might name itself in phrases, like a translation: Folds-in-Silence, Listens-Beyond-Seven.
• A galactic empire runs on ranks, so the title matters as much as the name: Exarch Thesara, Proconsul Zanenne.

Decide a few rules (which sounds they use, how long names are, whether titles come first) and every new name will sound like it belongs. The Alien Name Generator builds names this way for four kinds of species, and the AI Name Generator covers artificial minds.

Naming future cities

A future city's name tells you how it got there and who runs it now.

• Old names survive. Cities that outlast their founders keep a worn-down version of the original, so Old Cathenn and Santiago Landing both suggest a long history.
• Infrastructure becomes a name. People name districts after what they see every day: Dish Hollow, Upper Cable, Battery Wharf.
• Money names places. In a cyberpunk city, a corporation's name ends up on the skyline: Juniper Holdings Tower One. When two cities grow into one, they get a joint name, as in Orlane–Tegost Sprawl.
• The poor ends get blunt names. Soot Bottoms and Shack Bottoms need no explanation.
• Alien cities should sound like the species that built them, not like ours: The Hive Towers of Zhaash.

Try the Sci-Fi City and Cyberpunk City name generators. And for the view beyond the planet, the Galaxy Name Generator mixes survey codes like TKL 5936 with names like The Faded Kites.

Keep it plausible, and keep it yours

• Names wear down. A station called Habitat Zeta-Four will be "Zeta" within a year. Let your characters use nicknames.
• Not everything is grand. A future full of heroic names feels fake. Mix in dull ones, like Habitat Z-4 or Sector 62C.
• Avoid canon. Star Trek's Enterprise and Star Wars's Coruscant are famous because they're someone else's. Search any name before you publish, and steer clear of real spacecraft and well-known fictional ones.

For the whole galaxy in one place, see all the sci-fi name generators.