Good steampunk city names sound like a Victorian mill town with something mechanical going on: an old English ending, a word from the factory or the clock, and a bit of soot. The Steampunk City Name Generator builds names for the smoky, gear-driven towns of a steampunk world: Victorian mill towns, airship ports, clockwork cities, fog-bound undercities and frontier railheads, with a short description if you want one.
Eight good steampunk city names
All eight came from the generator, across its five styles:
- Shuttleton: a weaving town named after the loom's shuttle, with a real -ton ending.
- Clinkerworth: named after the clinker left in the furnace, which is exactly what it smells of.
- Normington's Mast: an airship port named after the person who put up the mooring mast.
- Tetherfield, whose harbourmaster has never once set foot on the ground: a sky port with a story in its description.
- Twelve Chimes: a clockwork city named after what you hear on the hour.
- Pinionwick, whose clockwork birds sing the hours from every rooftop: a gear name with the most charming description.
- Gloombottom: the bottom of the smog, named honestly.
- Tattersall's Halt: a frontier railway stop named after a person, the way real halts were.
Where steampunk names come from
The word steampunk was coined by the writer K. W. Jeter in 1987, as a jokey label for Victorian-set fantasy, but the cities go back further. Charles Dickens invented Coketown for Hard Times (1854), a mill town of red brick and smoke, and Manchester was nicknamed Cottonopolis. Steampunk names borrow that world and add brass.
- Victorian mill towns join a trade word to an English ending: Weftbury, Loombridge, Crucibleton.
- Airship ports use sailing words: masts, quays, capstans and windlasses. Capstanfield, Gustbury Air Quay.
- Clockwork cities are named after gears and bells: Dialbury, Eleven Hands, The Turning City.
- Smog and under names are for the tunnels and the soot: Soothollow, The Lamplit Under.
- Frontier names are forts, halts and railheads with a founder's surname: Fort Bairstow, Quarrie's Halt.
Building a steampunk city
- Give it an industry. A city that makes cloth, clocks or airships should sound like it.
- Split it in two. The polished upper town and the smoky under-city can have different names, and the gap between them is a story.
- Name the railway stops. A few halts and junctions make a map feel connected.
For the inventors and sky-captains who live there, try the Steampunk Name Generator. For a city in the clouds, the Sky City Name Generator has more, and for the streets, the Street Name Generator. Other futures are covered by the Cyberpunk City and Sci-Fi City name generators.
For more, see all the sci-fi name generators.