Name generators by culture
Real names from real places, built out of the morphemes those languages really use and split by the axes that matter in each one: male, female, family names, full names and the older generation. Every page explains what the parts mean instead of asking you to take a pretty sound on trust.
1 generator, 50 hand picked names ·
Written and checked by 
Wren Calloway
Are these real names or invented ones?
Real. Every pool on these pages is made of morphemes that the language genuinely builds names from, in its standard romanisation, so what comes out is a name somebody could plausibly be called. That is the opposite of the fantasy pages here, where the sounds are invented on purpose.
A generator for an invented language only has to be consistent with itself. A generator for a real one has to be right, and the difference shows up immediately. Japanese surnames voice at the join in ways that are decided compound by compound. Korean given names are drawn from a fixed inventory of syllable blocks. German family names carry an occupation, a place or a father. None of that survives being guessed at, so every page in this group states the rule it is built on and shows the characters where a language has them.
The axes are different in every language
On a fantasy page the useful split is by species. Here it is by the things a real naming system actually distinguishes: whether the name is male or female, whether it is a given name or a family one, whether you want the two together in the local order, and which generation it belongs to. That last one matters more than people expect. Endings date a name, and a character whose name is thirty years out of step reads as somebody's grandparent without you ever saying so.
Why the fifty underneath are real people names
Every generator page on this site carries fifty hand picked names as well as the tool, and in this group those fifty are not inventions: they are names in current or historical use, with what they are written in and what those characters say. Use the tool when you need a cast and the list when you need one name that has to be right, which is the same order most people end up using them in anyway.
Common questions
Are the names on these pages real or made up?
Real, and that is the whole distinction between this group and the fantasy one. Every pool is built from morphemes the language genuinely forms names with, written in its standard romanisation, so what the tool hands back is a name somebody could plausibly be called rather than a plausible sound. The fifty picked names under each tool are all in current or historical use.
Can I use a real culture's names for a character?
Yes, and the thing that makes it land is getting the internals right rather than avoiding it. Put the name in the order that culture uses, match the ending to the generation you are writing, and do not mix two naming systems inside one family without a reason the reader can see. Those three are what a reader from that culture actually notices.
Why does the same name have several spellings?
Because romanisation is a choice rather than a fact. A language written in another script has to be rendered into the Latin alphabet by some system, and different systems disagree about long vowels, doubled consonants and apostrophes. These pages use the standard system for each language and no diacritics, which is the form people actually type into a search box.
Which page should I start with?
Start with the culture, then pick the axis inside it. On the Japanese page that means choosing between a boy name, a girl name, a family name, the two together in Japanese order, or a traditional one from before 1970, because those are five genuinely different constructions rather than five labels on one list.
Do the names come with their meanings?
The fifty picked ones do, with the characters they are written in where the language uses them and what those characters say. The generated ones do not, because a name assembled from two morphemes carries the sense of both and spelling it out for every batch of twelve would bury the tool under text nobody asked for.
Can I use these names commercially?
Yes. Publish the book, ship the game, name the character. Real names are not anybody's property, and no credit or permission is needed. The license page covers the one boundary, which is about copying this site's own lists and notes wholesale rather than about the names themselves.