Castle Name Generator

How castle names are usually built

Real castles are named in three ways: for the place they stand on, for the family that built them, or for the job they do. A border fortress gets a job name such as Wolfwatch or Ironward, because its purpose is to see and to hold. A noble seat is named after land and family, as in Ashworth Manor or the Court of the Silver Lake. A ruin takes a past tense: the Fallen Tower, the Burned Keep of the Last King.

Short names carry on a banner, and longer ones belong on a map or in a ceremony. Use the short form in the dialogue of a garrison, and the long form when a herald announces a guest. Compound names such as Stormhold and Ravenwatch are easy to say and easy to remember, and an epithet like the Bitter Gate adds a personality to a wall that has no other voice in your story.

Naming castles so they belong together

A kingdom's castles should share a vocabulary. If the northern lords build in grey stone and name their keeps for weather and wolves, their castles will read as a family, and a southern fortress with a flowery name will clearly belong to a different culture. Decide which castles are old, which are new and which have been renamed after a war, and keep a few that carry two names to show that history. A castle should also earn its name in the story: a Wolfwatch should have a view, an Ironward should be hard to take, and a castle called the Silver Court should have a polite and dangerous owner. Readers forgive an odd name if the place lives up to it.

Twenty example castle names

• Wolfwatch a border fort whose garrison sleeps in armour.
• Ironward a grim fortress with one road in.
• The Bitter Gate a gatehouse that has seen eleven sieges.
• Ashworth Manor a lordly seat with a long list of enemies.
• The Silver Court of the Lily Gate a palace where nothing is said openly.
• The Fallen Tower of the Last King a ruin where the last siege ended.
• Stormhold a cliff castle that is cut off by every gale.
• Greycliff Keep an old keep above a harbour town.
• The Hollow Hall an empty castle that was left in a night.
• Ravenhold the home of a house that reads omens.
• Hartfell Abbey a fortified monastery with a famous library.
• The Steadfast Bastion of the Narrow Sea a harbour fortress that holds the strait.
• Thornwall a castle with briars growing through its gate.
• Beacon Rock a signal tower on a high crag.
• The Drowned Citadel a fortress half sunk in a lake.
• Dawnmarch Castle a rising house's newly built seat.
• Highmoor Grange a quiet manor with a secret cellar.
• The Weeping Keep a damp stronghold with a bad reputation.
• Eagleguard a mountain castle that cannot be attacked from below.
• Kingsford Palace a royal residence at the great bridge.