Cave Name Generator

Real caves are named by the people who found or feared them. Landowners and explorers gave us Wookey Hole, Gough's Cave, Lechuguilla and Krubera; miners named Saltpeter Cave, Blue John Cavern and Naica; and folklore supplied dozens of Devil's Holes, Devil's Throats and Hell's Mouths across every karst region on earth. Descriptive names record what the cave does or holds: Wind Cave breathes, Thunder Hole booms, Ruby Falls has a waterfall, Bat Cave and Swallow Cave are named for tenants. Show caves reach for grandeur with Cathedral, Palace, Ballroom and Grand Gallery.

Each language has its own cave word: English Cave, Cavern, Grotto, Hole and Pot; French Grotte, Gouffre (a shaft) and Aven; Spanish Cueva, Gruta and Sótano ('basement', used for Mexico's great pits); Italian Grotta; Slovene Jama; Vietnamese Hang. Inside a system, cavers name individual passages and rooms with blunt humor and physical description: the Squeeze, the Letterbox, Fat Man's Misery, the Meat Grinder, the Long Crawl, the Sump. Formations get domestic nicknames like the Wedding Cake and the Frozen Niagara.

Fantasy caves work best when they follow the same logic. A lair named for its occupant (Wyrmhollow, Kobold Burrows, Hag's Hollow), a delve named by dwarves (Deepdelve, the Old Delve) or a chamber named by the first explorer to crawl through it will always feel more real than a random adjective plus 'Cavern'.