African City Name Generator

Generate real African city, town and village names from every region of the continent, from Ibadan, Kumasi and Ouagadougou to Mombasa, Lalibela, Bulawayo, Stellenbosch and Antananarivo. Every entry is the name of a real place, so check a map before you set a story there.

About African city names

Africa has more than 50 countries and well over a thousand languages, so its city names follow many naming traditions, not one. This list holds real cities, towns and villages only, drawn from every region so that a map or a story can stay in one part of the continent.

West Africa gives Ibadan, Kano and Kumasi, cities of Yoruba, Hausa and Akan speakers, beside the English coinage Freetown. French-speaking Central Africa has its counterpart in Libreville, which also means free town, and repeats the -ville ending in Brazzaville and Franceville. Across the Maghreb the names are Arabic and Amazigh, as in Sidi Bou Said, named for a saint. The Swahili coast has old ports such as Mombasa, Lamu and Kilwa Kisiwani, and the Horn has Addis Ababa, which means new flower in Amharic, and Lalibela, named for a medieval king. In southern Africa, Mthatha, Gaborone and Masvingo sit beside Afrikaans endings: -fontein for a spring, -burg and -dorp for a town. Madagascar's long Malagasy names, such as Antananarivo and Fianarantsoa, are hard to mistake for anywhere else.

Spellings follow current maps, including official names adopted in recent years such as Gqeberha and Makhanda. Every entry belongs to a real place with its own people and history, so look it up on a map before you write about it.

How to choose African city names

• Choose the region before the name. A Sahara caravan town (Agadez, Chinguetti, Timbuktu), a Swahili coast port (Lamu, Bagamoyo, Malindi) and a Cape winelands town (Stellenbosch, Paarl, Franschhoek) belong to very different stories.
• Look the place up before you use it. A few minutes with a map and an encyclopedia entry tells you the country, the landscape and the languages spoken there, and keeps a desert town off the coast.
• Keep the accents and special letters that maps use: Thiès, Djenné, São Tomé, Lüderitz and Béjaïa are spelled that way on purpose.
• For historical fiction, check which name was in use at the time. Gqeberha was Port Elizabeth until 2021 and Mbombela was long known as Nelspruit, and older sources use the older names.
• Mix sizes to make a setting feel lived in: pair a capital such as Nairobi with a smaller town such as Nanyuki and a coastal town such as Kilifi.

Frequently asked questions

Are these real African cities?

Yes. Every entry is the name of a real city, town or village on the African continent or its islands, spelled the way current maps spell it. As with any list, check a map or an atlas before you rely on a single entry for a story or a game.

Which parts of Africa does the list cover?

All of them. You will find West African cities such as Ibadan, Kumasi and Dakar, Sahel and Sahara towns such as Timbuktu and Agadez, Lalibela and Harar in the Horn, Mombasa and Arusha in East Africa, Kisangani and Libreville in Central Africa, Bulawayo and Stellenbosch in the south, Fez and Tamanrasset in the Maghreb, and island towns such as Antananarivo and Port Louis. No single country makes up more than about 8 percent of the list.

Why do some South African towns have unfamiliar names?

South Africa has officially renamed a number of places in recent decades. Port Elizabeth became Gqeberha, Grahamstown became Makhanda and Nelspruit became Mbombela. The list uses the current official names, so look up the earlier name if your story is set in the past.

Can I use a real African town in a novel or game?

Yes, real place names are free to use in fiction. Real towns have real residents, though, so read about the place first and write it with the same care you would give a town in your own country. If you need full freedom, many writers keep the real region and change only the events.

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All 500 African city names