Mountain Name Generator

How mountain names are usually built

People name mountains by what they see from the valley. A peak is a tooth, a horn or an anvil, a range is a wall or a spine, and a colour or a weather word does the rest: the Grey Spire, the Storm Teeth. Older names are often a person or a god that nobody remembers, which is why a peak called Mount Karvard sounds ancient even though the reader cannot translate it. Long names add a story, as in the Pass of the Lost Army.

A pass is a different kind of place from a peak, and its name should reflect that. It is a road, so it gets a road word such as stair, gate or gap, and it is often named for the people who use it: the Drover's Gap, the Smuggler's Stair. A pass named for a battle or a death warns the reader that something will happen there.

Keeping mountains consistent on your map

Mountains have two sets of names: what the people below call them and what the people who climb them call them. A valley farmer says the Old Man, a mapmaker writes Mount Karvard, and a dwarf clan has its own word. Use that gap to show who lives where. Give each range one dominant source of names, such as animals for the north and kings for the south, and let one or two peaks break the rule because of a local story. Decide the height too, since names shift with it: a hill is a fell or a tor, a mountain is a peak or a spire, and the highest ranges may have no name at all, because nobody goes there.

Twenty example mountain names

• The Grey Spire a bare peak that is the first sight of the kingdom.
• Mount Karvard a volcano with an old, untranslatable name.
• The Storm Teeth a jagged range where thunder echoes for hours.
• Thalhold Crown of the Dead a burial peak ringed by tombs.
• The Drover's Gap a narrow pass used by cattle traders.
• The Weeping Wall a cliff face streaming with meltwater.
• The Last Stair the final climb to a monastery on the ridge.
• Dunmar Fang a lone peak above a mining town.
• The Hollow Mountains of the Old Dwarves a range riddled with abandoned halls.
• Raven Pass a border crossing watched from both sides.
• The Sleeping Giant a ridge that looks like a man lying down.
• Aldric's Folly a mountain named for a lord who tried to build on it.
• Kelmar Spine a long ridge that splits two rival kingdoms.
• The Smuggler's Stair a hidden path with a toll.
• The Iron Crown a ring of peaks rich in ore.
• The Throne of the Winter Queen a snow peak that is never free of cloud.
• Wolfgate Pass an icy road where packs follow caravans.
• Corvard Needle a thin summit that few have climbed.
• The Pale Heights a range seen from three kingdoms.
• Hungry Mountain a peak that takes a climber every winter.