Good forest names say what kind of wood it is before anyone walks in: Foxglove Shaw sounds like a Sunday walk, The Hungry Thicket does not. Every map needs a forest, and every forest needs a name the players will remember. This forest name generator gives you enchanted fantasy forests, elven woods, dark and haunted forests for your D&D campaign, and English woods, chases and holts named the way real ones are, with a line of description if you want one.
Eight good forest names
All eight came from the generator, across its styles:
- Honeyweald Forest: weald is the Old English word for forest, made sweet.
- The Forest of Painted Leaves: a fantasy wood that's beautiful rather than dangerous.
- The Moonlit Woods of Ithennis: an elven forest with a flowing name and a time of day.
- Drearshaw: a dark wood with an old English ending, shaw, for a small wood.
- The Watching Copse: a small wood that feels too big for its name.
- Tedholt Chase: a hunting chase with holt, another Old English word for wood.
- Church Spinney: a real-sounding English wood named after what stands beside it.
- Spellweald, where it is always the first week of spring: a magical forest with its story in the description.
How real woods and forests got their names
English woods are named in old words that each meant something slightly different:
- -hurst was a wooded hill and -holt a wood, both Old English, so they turn up in village names as well as woods.
- Weald is the Old English for forest, and survives in the Weald of Kent and Sussex.
- Shaw, copse and spinney are small woods; a copse was often cut back for timber.
- A chase was hunting land held by a lord rather than the king, as at Cannock Chase.
In medieval England a "forest" wasn't always wooded at all: it was land under forest law, kept for the king's hunting. William the Conqueror made the New Forest a royal forest in the 1070s, and Sherwood simply means "shire wood". Fantasy writers borrowed the same habits. Tolkien took Mirkwood from the Old Norse Myrkviðr, and Fangorn means "beard of tree" in his Elvish.
Choose English woods for names like Atherhurst Wood, Elven for Sylumel, Dark for Shroudtangle, or Fantasy for The Wandering Wilds. With a description adds a line of story: Weepbough, which has swallowed three search parties.
Putting a forest on the map
- Name it from the outside. Villagers on the edge of a forest name it after what they fear or use: firewood, hunting, wolves.
- Give big forests smaller parts. A great forest might hold a named copse, a chase and a glade, each with its own story.
- Let the description be a hook. A wood with standing stones that move is an adventure waiting to happen.
Beyond the trees, try the Mountain, River and Lake name generators, and for the wetter, darker parts of the map, the Swamp Name Generator. For the village at the forest's edge, there's the Village Name Generator.
For more, see all the world-building name generators.