Good sea names describe what it's like to sail on it: the Shivering Gulf, the Rime Sea, the Saffron Sea. Every fantasy map has a lot of blue on it, and all that water deserves a name. This sea name generator names seas and oceans for D&D campaigns, novels and worldbuilding, from the Shivering Deep to the Ambergrise Ocean, with a short description if you want a story to go with it.
Eight good sea names
All eight came from the generator, across its five styles:
- the Opal Wash: a fantasy sea with a jewel's colour and an old word for shallow water.
- the Sea of Snapped Oars: a stormy sea that tells sailors what to expect.
- the Wreckers' Sea: named after the people who live off its shipwrecks.
- the Hoarfrost Sea: a frozen sea named for the frost on the rigging.
- the White Road: a frozen sea that's flat and pale enough to travel across.
- the Cowrie Sea: a tropical sea named after a shell.
- the Frangipani Shallows: warm, sweet-smelling water over white sand.
- the Ocean That Has No Shore: a mythic ocean that sounds like the start of a creation story.
How seas get their names
Real seas are mostly named for where they are, what they look like, or a story:
- Where they are. The Mediterranean comes from the Latin for "middle of the land", because the Romans saw it as the sea in the middle of their world.
- A hopeful euphemism. The Greeks first called the Black Sea the inhospitable sea, then renamed it Pontus Euxinus, the hospitable sea, perhaps to keep it in a good mood.
- A myth. The Atlantic is the sea of Atlas, the Titan who held up the sky.
- A kenning. Old English poets called the sea the hronrād, the whale-road, which is where the mythic style's Whale-Road comes from.
Choose a style: fantasy for colours and wonders, stormy for wrecks and weather, frozen for ice and pale light, tropical for shells, flowers and lagoons, or mythic for gods and drowned kings. Choose With a description for a line of story, like the Breakers, whose tides run backwards on the darkest nights.
Putting seas on your map
- Name the big water first. An ocean around the edge, then smaller seas, gulfs and straits between the coasts.
- Let the coast decide. A sea beside a frozen kingdom should sound cold; one between spice islands should sound warm.
- Give sailors their own names. Sailors on both sides of a sea will call it different things, and a nickname like the Shipgrave tells you how they feel about it.
Fill the sea with land using the Island Name Generator, and with trouble using the Pirate Name Generator. For the water that runs into it, try the River and Lake name generators, and for the coasts around it, Continent and World.
For more, see all the world-building name generators.