Vampire names tell you how old a vampire is. A count with a castle, a Roman who's seen empires fall and a twenty-something in a leather jacket all need different names. This vampire name generator gives you four styles, from gothic aristocrat to modern urban fantasy, with full names, grand titles like Count and Countess, or just a first name.
Famous vampires and how they got their names
- Lord Ruthven (John Polidori's The Vampyre, 1819) made the vampire an aristocrat. The name was borrowed from Lady Caroline Lamb's novel Glenarvon, where it belongs to a thinly disguised Lord Byron.
- Carmilla (Sheridan Le Fanu, 1872) is really Countess Mircalla Karnstein, and also goes by Millarca: every alias is an anagram of her real name.
- Count Dracula (Bram Stoker, 1897) takes his name from Vlad III of Wallachia, "Dracula", meaning son of Dracul. His father was called Dracul after the Order of the Dragon.
- Count Orlok in the 1922 film Nosferatu exists because the film was an unauthorised adaptation of Dracula, so the names were changed.
- Lestat de Lioncourt and Louis de Pointe du Lac (Anne Rice) carry the "de" of old French nobility.
- Spike (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) was "William the Bloody" before that. Modern vampires often go by a nickname.
Three tricks vampire names use
- Titles and noble particles. Count, Baron, Lady; "de", "von". Since Lord Ruthven, the vampire of fiction has usually been an aristocrat, living off everyone else. The With a title format adds one.
- Anagrams and aliases. Someone who lives for centuries needs new identities. Carmilla shuffles her letters; "Alucard", Dracula backwards, has turned up from the 1943 film Son of Dracula to Castlevania and Hellsing.
- Names of night and shadow. Latin and Greek words for night, evening and the underworld (Nox, Vesper, Erebus, Lethe) make strong single names for an old, nameless thing.
Choosing a style
A vampire usually keeps the name they were born with, so the style says when they were turned:
- Gothic aristocrat: Western European nobility of the 1700s and 1800s, in the tradition of Dracula, Carmilla and Lestat. Pairs well with a title.
- Old World: Romanian, Hungarian and Slavic names, for vampires from the lands where the folklore began.
- Ancient: Roman, Greek and Near Eastern names, sometimes with a city instead of a surname: Lucius of Carthage.
- Modern: ordinary names for vampires who blend in, as in Twilight or True Blood. The surnames hint at something (Graves, Frost, Locke) without giving the game away. Modern vampires don't use titles, so that format isn't offered.
Making the name your own
- Decide when they were turned. A vampire born in 1750 and one born in 1990 shouldn't share a name style.
- Give them a current alias. An old vampire living in the modern world might pair a gothic real name with a modern one, or use an anagram like Carmilla.
- Add what others call them. An epithet like the Bloody or the Pale (try the Epithet Generator) is how mortals will remember them.
- Other creatures of the night: try the Werewolf, Ghost and Zombie name generators.
Need a name for the whole family? The Vampire Clan Name Generator names houses, courts and ancient bloodlines.