Forest Name Generator

How forest names are usually built

Real forests are mostly named for what grows in them, who owned them or what happened there, and fictional forests work best when they follow the same logic. A tree and a word for woodland make the plainest names: Yewholt, Ashfell, Birchwood. An adjective adds age or mood: the Elder Wood, the Hollow Thicket. The longest names carry a legend in the last words: the Weald of the Sleeping Giants tells a reader there is a story under the trees.

Match the name to the feeling you want. Ancient forests take slow, heavy words such as elder, grey and standing. Haunted woods take loss and decay: gallows, widow, drowned. Enchanted woods take small bright things: dew, lantern, bluebell, wren. A reader makes up their mind about a forest before the first tree appears, and the name is the first thing they meet.

Making a forest feel like part of the map

Name a forest the way the people nearest to it would. Villagers on the edge call it by a plain name that describes its use, such as the Wood or the Chase, and mapmakers far away use something grander. Let the name hold one real fact about the place: the dominant tree, a famous killing, a law that bans cutting wood. Then let that fact show up in the story, in the smell of the leaves or the fear the locals show. If your world has several forests, give each its own source of names, such as trees for the north and saints for the south, so that a reader can tell where they are by the shape of a name alone.

Twenty example forest names

• The Elder Wood the oldest forest on the map, left alone by every king.
• Yewholt a dark stand of yew where the dead are buried.
• The Hollow Thicket a tangle of thorn that swallows lost travellers.
• Gallowsholt a wood that was once the county hanging ground.
• The Weeping Weald of the Drowned it grows over a flooded valley.
• Moonleaf Glade a clearing where pale leaves glow at night.
• The Whispering Grove the trees are said to repeat what travellers say.
• Ashfell a burned forest that has begun to grow again.
• The Starlit Dell of the Fey Queen a hidden hollow that is hard to leave.
• The Long Chase a royal hunting forest with strict laws.
• Rowanshaw a small wood where villagers hang charms against witches.
• The Black Wilds of the Hanged bandit country on the old road.
• Thornwold a wooded hill that no army has ever crossed.
• The Sleeping Wildwood it grows no leaves in summer.
• Foxglove Wood a gentle forest full of poison flowers.
• The Grey Wardens' Forest a woodland patrolled by an order of rangers.
• Lanternbower a forest that smells of honey and woodsmoke.
• The Mourning Copse a stand of birches planted for a lost queen.
• Beechhurst of the Old Road a forest cut by a single ancient paved track.
• The Hidden Hazelglade the home of a quiet, secretive folk.