Wizard name generator
Press generate for a batch of wizard names built from archaic given names, chronicler surnames and earned epithets. The fifty further down are written by hand, each with a note on what it implies.
Every batch carries a number. Keep the link and the same wizard names come back in the same order. Batch number 30366
50 wizard names with the epithets to match
Written by hand rather than rolled. Each entry says where the sound comes from and what the name suggests about the person carrying it.
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Alaric is old enough to feel inherited, and the epithet finishes the job: ash is what is left once the fire is out, so this reads as a wizard who survived the thing that made his reputation.
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Two blunt syllables and a one word surname. It sounds like a man who signs documents, which makes it a good wizard name for a court magician rather than a hermit.
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Morwenna is Cornish and carries a sea cold weight. Grimsbane is the part somebody else added afterwards, and the pairing suits a witch the villagers were relieved to have nearby.
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Eldric is short enough to shout across a workroom. Thornquill names the two tools of the trade at once, a sharp point and something to write with.
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The epithet is the interesting half. It describes a wizard who turns up without an invitation and is never quite thanked afterwards, while Vashti keeps the whole thing archaic.
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Corvain has a crow buried in it, which is half the aesthetic already. Sablecroft grounds it on an actual holding, so the character feels landed rather than wandering.
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Halveric is invented but sits comfortably beside Roderick and Alaric. Sleepless implies years of work rather than one dramatic spell, which is the harder thing to earn.
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Ilvana is warm and rounded in the mouth, so the frost in Wintervale does all the cooling. Fits a young wizard who has not yet grown into her reputation.
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One word, three beats, no epithet at all. A wizard name for someone who needs no nickname because nobody in the room outranks him.
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Osbert reads as a village schoolmaster until the surname arrives. A cinderfen is a burnt marsh, and that mismatch is the whole character in two words.
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Quindas has an off centre sound that stops it feeling borrowed from anywhere. The Patient is the sort of title you only collect by outliving the people who chose it.
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Serlath ends on a soft breath and then Rimefall drops the temperature. This is a wizard name for a mountain order that counts a year in frosts.
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Ysoria opens on a rare letter and closes on an open vowel, so it stays graceful. The Pale is plain by comparison, which is exactly why it lands.
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Garnoch is all consonant and no charm. Emberdell softens it just enough to suggest the man keeps a fire lit for visitors he claims not to want.
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Formal and a little cold, with a Latin tilt on the ending. It suits a wizard who teaches, publishes and is quietly feared by his own students.
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Four syllables and then a title, which is how academic wizards introduce themselves. The Learned is a boast other people are supposed to make on your behalf.
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Wind at the front, a hiss at the back. A weather wizard name, and one of the few here that would work just as well painted on a ship.
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Tavish is Scottish and refreshingly ordinary, so the surname carries all the strangeness. Hollowtide sounds like a date on a calendar nobody else keeps.
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A long name and a longer epithet, which is the point. Whatever happened to her happened twice, and she is still here to be written about.
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Tarveth is blunt and slightly tarry to say. Sablebriar adds black thorns to it, so the pair reads as a hedge witch with a formal education behind her.
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Compact, faintly rustic, easy to say in a hurry. Fits a wizard who works out of a back room behind a shop rather than the top of a tower.
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Nyveth is thin and quiet on the tongue. The Waning ties her to a moon that is going out, which is a useful thing to hint at and never explain.
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Calder is a real river name and reads as solid working stock. Yarrow is a wound herb, so the pair suggests a wizard who mostly gets called out for fevers.
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Sharp opening, flat close, four consonants and one long vowel. This is the wizard name that fits on a shop sign without being trimmed.
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Rhoswen is Welsh and rolls softly. A gloampyre is a fire seen at dusk, so together they suit somebody whose working hours start when everyone else stops.
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Kelvas is clipped and unfriendly, and the epithet confirms it. A wizard who broke an oath and kept the label afterwards as a warning to the next order.
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Aldwin is genuine Old English and means old friend, which sits oddly and usefully against a surname built out of evening bells and rock.
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One flat syllable, then a claim. Nine-Named suggests a wizard who has abandoned eight identities already and fully expects to abandon this one.
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Cadwyn has a Welsh chain inside it and a clean two beat rhythm. Greygale keeps the weather in the name without reaching for storms and lightning.
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Wyland borrows the sound of an old smith name. Withered is unkind, which is the point: chroniclers rarely flattered the wizards they outlived.
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Hesper is the evening star and works for any gender in practice. Ravenfen puts the character in wet low country where the birds outnumber the people.
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Lorn is one syllable and reads as lonely by accident of English. Ashdrift is what settles after a burning, so the pair is bleak and very usable.
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Avanna is open and nearly musical, so the epithet supplies all the heat. Kindled implies a wizard who came into power late and then very suddenly.
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Grimmond is heavy in both syllables and a stormbarrow is a grave with weather sitting over it. The most funereal wizard name on this list, deliberately so.
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Soft consonants and a whispered ending. It sounds like a name spoken indoors, which suits somebody who works with archives instead of armies.
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Orsolya is Hungarian and unfamiliar enough to feel foreign in most settings. Ill-Starred is the kind of thing written about a wizard afterwards, never chosen.
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Draveth is short and sour. Thistledell undercuts it with something small and prickly growing in a valley, which keeps the character short of pure menace.
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Selwyn is mild and old fashioned, the least threatening name here by a distance. Hollowbriar is the warning label the surname quietly attaches to it.
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Marwood sounds like an estate rather than a person. Fallow is a field left unplanted on purpose, so the epithet says he stopped working and had reasons.
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A clean invented name with a Roman finish. Two syllables, no ornament, and it survives being said quickly across a noisy table.
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Ceriwen is Welsh, gentle, and shortens to Ceri without a fight. The Quiet is the least dramatic epithet on the page and probably the most frightening.
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Hollis is unisex and modern enough to read as a person rather than a title. Cindergale supplies the burning and the wind in a single compound.
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Thorne is a real surname doing duty as a given name, which reads as self chosen. Emberwick is the last part of a candle, so the pair suggests borrowed time.
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Ambrose is Greek for immortal and has centuries of honest use behind it. Long-Sleeping turns that into something far less flattering and much more interesting.
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Zerith is invented and sits at the sharp edge of the archaic pool. Nightbriar is exactly the sort of surname a chronicler would coin and then never explain.
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The mal in front does a great deal of work without ever being spelled out. A wizard name that tells the reader which side he is on before any dialogue.
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Wren is the smallest bird and the shortest name on the list. Saltmoor makes it coastal and hard, and the contrast between the two is the whole appeal.
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Ysolt is a clipped spelling of a very old name, softened at the front and hard at the back. Unmourned is bleak, and implies the character died once already.
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Osgar is the older spelling and lands blunter than the modern one. Fellthorn puts a hill and a spike into the surname, which fits a border wizard well.
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Peverel is Norman and slightly ridiculous, which is the joke. The Dim is either an insult or a plain description of the light he prefers to work by.
What makes a name sound like a wizard?
Wizard names read old before they read magical. They borrow from Old English, Welsh, Latin and Norman roots, avoid modern spellings, and stack two or three syllables around a hard consonant. The epithet does the rest: a chronicler adds the Ashen or the Forsworn long after the wizard stopped choosing.
A wizard name has two halves and most people only write the first one. The given name places the character in a culture, and the epithet places them in a story. Alaric on its own is a Gothic king. Alaric the Ashen is somebody a village still argues about on market day.
Where the given names come from
The stems here all end on a consonant and the endings all open on a vowel, so the join in any generated name is a clean consonant and vowel pair. That is why nothing on this page comes out with three consonants jammed into the middle of a word. The roots lean Old English, Welsh, Latin and Norman, because those are the sound worlds most readers already file under old without being told to.
Earning the epithet
An epithet is not a rank and it is not a class. It is something a chronicler wrote down after the fact, usually unkindly, and the wizard had no vote in it. The Sleepless, the Twice-Drowned and the Unasked all point at an event the reader has not been shown yet, which is close to the most useful thing a name can do in a first chapter.
Surnames work the same way. Cinderfen, Vesperstone and Yarrowvale are each a place welded to a thing, and every one of them implies a landscape the character walked out of. If your setting runs to wizard colleges rather than wizard hermits, take the surname and drop the epithet. The two together read as a full chronicle entry, which is more weight than a minor character can carry.
More name generators
Same syllable rules, different genre. Each one has its own tool and its own fifty picks.