Monster Name Generator

How monster names are usually built

A monster is rarely named by itself. Travellers, farmers and soldiers name it, and the name has to travel from mouth to mouth. That produces two layers: a short, harsh word that sounds like what the thing does, such as Skrelgnash or Burgum, and a descriptive handle, the Hollow Stalker, that a child could repeat. Most good monster names carry one of each.

The type changes the sound. Beasts get snapping consonants and parts of animals. Brutes get heavy, round syllables that sound like a door slamming. Horrors get strange vowels and sibilants, and are often named only by what they are not.

Keeping monsters believable

Decide who named the monster and how they learned. A name from a survivor is a description, a name from a scholar is a classification, and a name from a mob is a nickname. Let different regions use different names for the same creature, and let one name be wrong. Keep the sound tied to the type: if all your monsters have the same harsh syllables, they will blur together. Give one or two of them a name that sounds almost gentle, because the contrast is frightening. Keep a bestiary with each creature's names, lair, appetite and the story that gave it its name, and check that no two lairs share a landmark.

Twenty example monster names

• Skrelgnash, the Hollow Stalker a thin, pale hunter of drowned woods.
• Burgum the Lumbering Crusher guards a bridge and wants a toll in pies.
• Ythulu, the Waiting Choir a sound under the church that grows each year.
• The Mire Hound of Wolf Hollow leaves tracks that fill with black water.
• Dolgmash of the Stone Bridge a patient brute who dislikes loud carts.
• Zhulothul, the Boneless Presence a thing that lives in the cellar wall.
• Targthrak the Ashen Boar a burnt-forest beast that charges at fires.
• Moll the Mud-Caked Giant sleeps through winters and snores like thunder.
• Quthulum, Choir of the Sunken Church sings with a hundred drowned voices.
• Hargfang, the Rabid Skulker a lone predator with an old injury.
• The Gormless Smasher of Cairn Peak not clever, but nearly impossible to stop.
• Nhulssa, the Weeping Hollow a dark patch of the floor that follows you.
• Vrekmir, Prowler of the Salt Reeds a marsh hunter that stalks fishermen.
• Gulmok of the Deep Cellar a shambling brute with a stolen lantern.
• Ilmuun, the Staring Tide a slow horror that comes in with the fog.
• The Famished Wolf of the Crow Marsh only hunts the last stragglers of a party.
• Brugrum the Warty Hurler throws boulders at anything that moves.
• Cael the Unseen Watcher a shape at the edge of every candle.
• Rasprak, Slinker of the Briar Dark a thorn-covered stalker with shining eyes.
• The Sleeping Thumper of the Great Stair wakes slowly and then not at all gently.