Last name generator

Where surnames come from

Hereditary surnames are recent in most of the world: in England they settled in the centuries after the Norman Conquest, and some countries adopted them by law much later. Almost all of them began as one of four kinds of description, and knowing which kind a name is helps you pick one that fits a character's roots.

• A parent's name. Johnson, MacDonald, Fitzgerald, Ivanov, Petrov, Hansen, Fernández. Many languages add a suffix or prefix meaning son of: -son, -sen, Mac, Fitz, -ov, -ez.
• A trade. Smith, Miller, Baker, Cooper. The same job gives a surname in language after language: Schmidt in German, Lefèvre in French, Ferrari in Italian, Kowalski in Polish, Kuznetsov in Russian and Haddad in Arabic all mean smith.
• A place. Hill, Wood, Atwood, Lindqvist (lime-tree twig), van der Meer (of the lake), Yamamoto (base of the mountain).
• A nickname. Brown, Klein (small), Russo (red-haired), Armstrong.

Rules that change by culture

• Gender. Russian, Polish and Greek surnames take a feminine form: Ivanova, Kowalska, Papadopoulou. Choose Feminine to see them.
• Two surnames. In Spain and Mexico people usually carry both parents' surnames, the father's first. This page gives one; the character name generator gives the full pair.
• Order. Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese names put the family name first.
• Few surnames, many people. A small number of family names are shared by a large share of people in China, Korea and Vietnam, so a common surname there says little about a family.

Fantasy surnames

Fantasy families follow the same four sources. English-style fantasy surnames such as Ravenscroft and Thornfield are place names; dwarven clan names such as Coalhelm are trade and deed names; noble houses are named for their founder or their seat. Elvish family names here are long and flowing, for peoples whose families are older than the towns around them.

• Match the world's history. A peasant family in a feudal world is more likely to be called Miller or Atwood than House Valane.
• Search before you settle. Real surnames belong to real families. If a character is a villain, check you haven't given them the name of a famous living person.