Fantasy Town Name Generator

Good fantasy town names sound like real places because they're built the same way: something the town is known for plus an old ending, like Gullmouth for a fishing port or Cinderscar for a mining town. Real town names were descriptions once: Oxford was the ford where oxen crossed, Ashby the farm by the ash trees. That's why they sound right, and why invented names often don't. This fantasy town name generator builds names the same way, joining something the town is known for to an ending from real English place names, so a fishing port sounds like a fishing port and a mining town like a mining town.

Ten good fantasy town names

All ten came from the generator, and each ending is a real one from English place names:

• Gullmouth: -mouth, where a river meets the sea, for a fishing port.
• Shinglehithe: -hithe was a landing place for boats, as in Rotherhithe.
• Cinderscar: a scar is a rocky cliff in northern English, for a mining town.
• Bishop's Forgegill: a gill is a narrow ravine, and towns owned by the Church took names like Bishop's Stortford.
• Mistford-upon-Rill: a ford with its river added, like Stratford-upon-Avon.
• Ottermere: a mere is a lake, for a quiet lakeside village.
• Middle Honeythorpe: -thorpe is a Norse farm, and Middle, Upper and Lower tell villages with the same name apart.
• Much Cherrycott: Much means great or large, as in Much Wenlock.
• Steeple Wyrdcombe: wyrd is Old English for fate, and a combe is a valley, for a town with something strange about it.
• Beaconburgh: -burgh is a fortified place, for a garrison town with a signal fire.

What the endings mean

Most English place-name endings come from Old English or Old Norse, and each once meant something:

• -ton and -ham: a farmstead or village, the commonest endings of all.
• -by and -thorpe: a farm or village in Old Norse. They cluster in the north and east, where the Danes settled.
• -wick and -wich: a specialised settlement, often a dairy farm or a trading place. The salt towns of Cheshire (Nantwich, Middlewich, Northwich) all have it.
• -bury, -burgh and -borough: a fortified place. -chester and -caster go further back, to a Roman fort.
• -ley and -hurst: a clearing in a wood, and a wooded hill. -thwaite is a Norse clearing, common in Cumbria.
• -ford, -bridge, -mouth: where a river was crossed, or where it met the sea. -hithe was a landing place for boats.
• -beck and -bourne: a stream (Norse and English). -ey and -holm: an island, or dry ground in a marsh.
• -dale, -combe and -den: valleys. -fell, -gill and -scar: a hill, a ravine and a rocky cliff, from the Norse of the northern hills.
• -minster and -stow: a great church, and a holy place.

Ten kinds of town

Pick what the town is known for, and the generator chooses both halves to match:

• Farming: crops and animals with homely endings. Barleythorpe, Shepworth.
• Coastal and fishing: catches and weather, ending in harbours and headlands. Herringness, Gullhithe.
• Mining and mountain: ores and stone, with northern hill words. Ironscar, Slategill.
• Forest and woodland: trees and animals, ending in clearings and groves. Hazelhurst, Wolfshaw.
• Magical: the strange made ordinary. Wyrdholm, Gloamdell.
• Temple and abbey: churches and the people who ran them. Abbotsminster, Vesperstow.
• Market and trade: goods, tolls and crossings. Silkgate, Market Tollbridge.
• Fort and garrison: walls and watchmen. Spearchester, Wardhold.
• Crafts and guilds: the trades that gave England its surnames. Tannerton, Loomfield.
• River and lake: water, birds and fish. Heronford, Eelmere-on-Wend.

Little, Nether and -on-Sea

Real maps are full of extra words that tell neighbouring places apart, and the generator adds them now and then:

• Upper and Lower, Great and Little, Nether (an old word for lower): two villages with the same name, one up the hill. Hampshire has Over Wallop, Middle Wallop and Nether Wallop.
• Market and Chipping: chipping is Old English for a market, as in Chipping Norton. These go on market towns.
• -on-Sea and -upon-[river]: Southend-on-Sea, Stratford-upon-Avon. The river names here are made up, but Avon is a real lesson: it simply meant "river".

Putting towns on a map

• Let a region share its endings. If the north of your map is full of -by, -thwaite and -fell and the south of -ton and -ham, you've hinted at two peoples and a history without writing a word of it. England's Danelaw works exactly like this.
• Name towns after their neighbours. A river gives its name to the towns along it, and a big town to the villages around it (Little, Nether).
• Tolkien did it first. The Shire is full of English-style names: Hobbiton, Bywater, and Michel Delving, from old words for "great" and "digging". Bree, he explained, comes from a Celtic word for "hill".
• Not English? For a town that should sound foreign to your heroes, try the Fantasy Country Name Generator for a different sound.
• People for the town. The Anglo-Saxon and Medieval name generators give the townsfolk names from the same England that named the places.

Building a town in Minecraft? The Minecraft Town Name Generator names villages, towns, cities and kingdoms, including names made from blocks.

To fill the town with people, try the NPC Name Generator, which gives townsfolk a job and a quirk as well as a name.

Use it for any settlement on your map: a hamlet, a village, a market town or the edge of a city, including river towns, mining towns and ports.

For the streets and markets of a bigger town, try the Fantasy District Name Generator.

For the smaller places, try the Village Name Generator; for the land around them, the Kingdom and Continent name generators.