Necromancer Name Generator

How necromancer names are usually built

Necromancers come in three kinds of names. Scholars are known by a title and an old family name, Magister Ossian Marrow, because they trained in a university or an order and want you to know it. Ritualists take a cult name from a dead language, with hard consonants and a finishing sound like -oth or -ix, followed by a priestly office. Outcasts are known by a first name, a family name and a trade, and the trade is the giveaway: Gravedigger, Sexton, Ferryman.

The best of them hide menace in the ordinary. A name that sounds like a clerk at the cemetery gate is more frightening than one with three skulls in it.

Keeping the dead in order

Decide what necromancy is in your world and how it is taught. If it is a discipline with schools, names should show a common style and a clear chain of teachers. If it is a forbidden art, names should be hidden, borrowed or changed. Give each necromancer one name that other characters use and one they use for themselves, and let a scene turn on the difference. Avoid decorating every name with bones and skulls: one such word is a signature, three are a costume. Keep a sheet with each practitioner's name, order, teacher and the dead who answer to them, and check that no two have the same office in the same city.

Twenty example necromancer names

• Magister Ossian Marrow a lecturer in funerary law who raises only the willing.
• Vorthakoth, Gravewarden of the Ninth Grave a ritualist who keeps a ledger of the buried.
• Hester Pike, the Ragged Gravedigger digs at night and hears the dead mutter.
• Cordelia Vael, Keeper of the Ossuary catalogues skeletons with great tenderness.
• Nekulex the Hollow a cult priest who never speaks aloud.
• Dunstan Fell of Gallows Hill an exile who lives by a hanging tree.
• Doctor Perpetua Ashenfell a physician who ended up in the wrong business.
• Zulmorgath, the Candlelit Soulbinder a patient binder of spirits in glass.
• Tam Barrow, Bell Ringer of Last Mile rings for those nobody mourns.
• Archivist Ignatius Pallor a keeper of death records with a secret index.
• Xelurexek the Veiled Mourner leads funerals that never quite end.
• Ysenda Rook, Wake Keeper sits up with the dead and hears their stories.
• Reader Wystan Cryptmoor a reader of the dead tongues.
• Gulosathun, Dirge Singer of the Silent Choir sings the dead back with a low hum.
• Jory Mudge the Sleepless Sexton buries the same grave three times.
• Professor Zenobia Hexworth a researcher of memory in bones.
• Brembathul the Waiting Gatekeeper a cult elder who guards a sealed vault.
• Meg Slape of the Plague Pit a gleaner who sells what she finds.
• Balthazar Knell the Gaunt a scholar whose students never graduate.
• Hesh the Deathless Tombkeeper a keeper of a king's tomb and its secrets.