Characters data

Medieval name data

This is the whole grammar behind the Medieval Name Generator: 48 building blocks in 2 sets, assembled by one pattern, with a selection space of 560 combinations. Nothing is withheld and nothing is summarised: the lists below are the arrays the generator runs on.

Summary

Where these blocks came from

Both lists follow the three real sources of English surnames before they became hereditary: occupation, place of origin and father's name. The individual entries are own selection.

The building blocks

Worked examples

Six names this generator produced, with the measurements the site shows next to every name. Syllables follow one published rule: count each run of vowel letters as one syllable, then subtract one for a silent trailing e when the word has more than one vowel group. The rule is approximate at the edges and deliberately simple, so anyone can apply it to any name here and get the same answer.

Reuse is welcome under CC BY 4.0. Attribution line: Data: NameForge Naming Corpus v1, https://nameforge.name/data. A name assembled from these blocks can coincide with a real name, business or trademark; nothing here is checked against any register.

Related corpus entries

The generators this one shares naming conventions with, and how their block counts compare. A larger corpus is not a better one: medieval names are assembled from 48 blocks in 2 sets, and a generator with fewer blocks in more sets can still reach a wider selection space.

Back to the Medieval Name Generator, or to the full corpus index.

Last reviewed 6 August 2026. Corpus v1. Method: how NameForge builds a name. Built and maintained by FusionStudios.