Good cyberpunk city names sound crowded, corporate and a little worn out: a sprawl named like a metro area, districts named after the industry that left, and towers named after the company that owns them. This cyberpunk city name generator names every layer of a future megacity: the sprawl itself, its districts and neighbourhoods, gleaming corporate arcologies, slums and undercities, and the neon nightlife strips in between. Add a short description for an instant setting hook in your RPG, game or story.
Eight good cyberpunk city names
All eight came from the generator, across its five styles:
- Sevara–Ostira Sprawl: two cities that grew into one, named like a real conurbation.
- Port Sevida, whose water supply is owned by a soft-drinks company: a megacity with its politics in one line.
- Cannery Square: a district named after an industry that's long gone.
- Lindqvist Yards: a neighbourhood named after whoever built it, decades ago.
- Prentiss Tower One, whose staff canteen feeds sixty thousand people a day: a corporate arcology big enough to be a town.
- Rustditch: an undercity name that says exactly what it's like down there.
- Jukebox Mile: a neon strip with a bit of old-fashioned glamour.
- Silver Dollar Avenue, whose fortune tellers use cheap augmented reality: a nightlife strip where the future is second-hand.
How cyberpunk names its cities
The genre's cities grew out of William Gibson's Neuromancer (1984), set in the Sprawl, the Boston–Atlanta Metropolitan Axis: one city running down a whole coastline. Since then, cyberpunk cities have tended to be named like real metropolitan areas, with the old names still showing through. The tabletop game Cyberpunk gave us Night City, later the setting of Cyberpunk 2077.
- Megacity names use the language of planning departments: Metro, Greater, Special Zone, Sprawl. Greater Halira, Zania Special Zone.
- Districts keep the name of what used to be there: a cannery, a gantry, a chimney. Chimney Heights, the Gantry Blocks.
- Arcologies are vast self-contained buildings, a word the architect Paolo Soleri made from architecture and ecology. Here they're named after the corporations that own them: the Prentiss Arcology, Goldleaf Ziggurat.
- Slums and undercities are named by the people who live there: Bucket Bottoms, Rag End, Mouldtown.
- Neon strips sound like a night out: Kaleidoscope Strip, Ultraviolet Boulevard.
Choose With a description for a line about the place, like the Gantry Blocks, whose residents grow vegetables on every balcony.
Building your sprawl
- Name the city first, then go down. One megacity name, a handful of districts, two or three arcologies and one undercity is plenty for a campaign.
- Let the corporations show. If a tower is named after a company, decide what the company makes and how far its name reaches into the streets.
- Give the poor parts better names. Official names are bland; the nicknames locals use are where the character is.
For the people who live there, try the Cyberpunk Name Generator. For cities of other futures, there's the Sci-Fi City, Steampunk City and Post-Apocalyptic Settlement name generators, and for the streets themselves, the Street Name Generator.
For more, see all the sci-fi name generators.