Character Name Generator
For characters that live outside a medieval fantasy setting. Switch between sci-fi, superhero, villain, and anime OC below, or open a dedicated generator for more results in one style.
Pick a style
Writing a medieval fantasy story instead?
These four styles cover characters that don’t fit a typical sword-and-sorcery setting: alien names for sci-fi, epithet-style names for heroes and villains, and stylized names for anime original characters. If your setting is closer to elves, dwarves, and kingdoms, the fantasy name generator is the better starting point, with its own dedicated generators for each race.
Naming a screen name instead of a character? The username generator covers that instead.
Matching the style to the medium, not just the genre
Genre and medium don’t always point to the same generator. A grounded sci-fi novel usually wants the sci-fi generator’s harder syllables regardless of how comic-book its plot gets, while a lighthearted webcomic about superpowers might actually read better with names from the superhero generator even if it’s not technically about heroes. Anime OC names carry their own visual and tonal expectations that don’t map cleanly onto “fantasy” or “sci-fi” as genre labels — they’re closer to a specific stylistic register than a setting.
Writing an ensemble cast benefits from deliberately mixing registers rather than pulling every name from one generator: a found-family sci-fi crew reads more real when not everyone sounds like they came from the same syllable bank, the same way a real group of people rarely shares one naming convention.
Frequently asked questions
- Are the anime OC names based on real Japanese names?
- No — they're invented syllable combinations styled to sound like an anime dub name, not real Japanese names. For an authentic Japanese name, a dedicated resource on Japanese naming conventions is a better source.
- Can I use these names in a published story or game?
- Yes — every generated name is free to use for any personal or commercial project, with no attribution required.
- Do superhero and villain names work together as a matched pair?
- They're built from separate word banks with different tones on purpose, so a hero and villain from the two generators will usually contrast well without needing to be manually matched.
- Can I generate a full name, or just a first name / codename?
- Sci-fi and anime OC produce single invented names, while superhero and villain results are already two-part (an epithet plus a role or title), so they read as complete on their own without pairing with another generator.
- Is there a generator for regular human names in a sci-fi setting?
- Not a dedicated one — the sci-fi generator's invented syllables work for both human and alien characters in most space-opera settings. For a name that reads as distinctly ordinary-human, the fantasy pillar's human name generator is a closer fit even outside a medieval setting.
- Do these work for tabletop RPG characters, not just writing?
- Yes — sci-fi and superhero campaigns in particular tend to draw on the same naming conventions as the fiction they're inspired by, so results here work directly for a character sheet.