Civil War Name Generator
Period-accurate 1860s names for soldiers, officers and civilians
Tap a name to copy itPress Space for a new batch500 names in this generator
Generate authentic American Civil War era names: Yankee farm boys and Southern planters' sons, Irish and German immigrant privates, USCT soldiers, Louisiana Creoles, officers with rank, camp nicknames and the wives, nurses and sisters back home, all built from real 1860s given names and regional surnames.
About civil war names
Civil War names sound right when the given name comes from the Bible or from American hero-worship and the surname fits the region. Men born in the 1830s and 1840s were Ezekiel, Josiah, Hiram, Silas, Cyrus, Amos and Lemuel, or carried a whole statesman as a first name: Thomas Jefferson Haskins, Andrew Jackson Pettigrew, Francis Marion Lockhart. Women were Lucinda, Harriet, Permelia, Sophronia and Matilda, with diminutives like Sallie, Mattie, Hattie and Lizzie used in letters and on headstones alike. Puritan virtue names (Thankful, Temperance, Experience) still survived in New England, and Southern girls were named for states: Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, Missouri.
Surnames carry the geography. Union regiments were full of New England names like Whitcomb, Peabody and Sanborn beside Irish Brigade names (Mulcahy, Rafferty, Shanahan) and the German names of Missouri and Ohio units (Eberhardt, Pfeiffer, Osterhaus). Confederate rolls mix Tidewater planter names (Fitzhugh, Taliaferro, Randolph), Scots-Irish hill-country names (McAllister, Caudill, Hatfield) and Louisiana Creole names (Boudreaux, Thibodeaux, Prejean). United States Colored Troops rolls show freedmen choosing surnames like Freeman, Liberty and Newman, or classical first names such as Scipio and Cato.
This list mixes all of those, plus middle-initial forms, ranked entries from private to general, and camp nicknames, for reenactor personas, historical fiction, tabletop campaigns and family-history placeholders.
Tips for choosing a name
- Pick the region first, then the name: a New England corporal is Ephraim Shattuck, a Georgia private is Pinkney Scruggs, and a Wisconsin German is Gottlieb Hoffmann. The surname tells the reader where the character enlisted.
- Soldiers almost never used full formal names in camp: Ezekiel is Zeke, Hezekiah is Hez, Lafayette is Fate, and Washington is Wash. Use the short form in dialogue and the full form on the muster roll.
- Middle initials were a mark of respectability on letters and rosters, so Thaddeus J. Whitcomb reads like a clerk or lieutenant while plain Thad Rowlett reads like a farm boy.
- Give officers older, weightier names and privates plainer ones. Colonel Archibald Rhett and Major Ambrose Kimball feel like gentry; Bud Rountree and Lem Hightower feel like the ranks.
- For women on the home front or in hospitals, pair a classic given name with a family surname already used for a soldier (Clara Winthrop, Lucy Wickham) so letters home feel like they belong to the same family.
Frequently asked questions
What were common names for Civil War soldiers?
Muster rolls are dominated by John, William, James, George, Thomas, Charles, Henry and Samuel, but the names that feel most distinctly 1860s are the Old Testament and statesman names: Ezekiel, Josiah, Hiram, Silas, Cyrus, Amos, Jedediah, Thaddeus, Lafayette, Washington and Jefferson. Many men also went by nicknames like Zeke, Jube, Wash and Hez.
How do I tell a Union name from a Confederate name?
Mostly by surname and region. Northern units leaned New England Yankee (Peabody, Whitcomb), Irish (Mulcahy, Keegan) and German (Eberhardt, Zimmermann). Southern units leaned Tidewater planter names (Taliaferro, Fitzhugh), Scots-Irish (McAllister, Hatfield), Deep South names (Culpepper, Yarbrough) and Louisiana Creole names (Boudreaux, Landry). Given names overlapped heavily on both sides.
Are these names good for reenacting or a first-person impression?
Yes. Each entry combines a given name and a surname that were both in use in the 1860s, with region-appropriate pairings, so they work as impression names for Union or Confederate reenactors, living-history programs and period letters. The ranked and nickname entries give you a camp name and a roster name for the same persona.
Are any of these real historical people?
No. The given names and surnames are real and period-appropriate, but the combinations are invented and well-known generals and politicians have been deliberately avoided, so you can use them freely in fiction, games, reenacting and school projects.
All 500 civil war names
Browse the full list
- Ezekiel Thornbury
- Josiah Pemberton
- Thaddeus Whitcomb
- Sarah Jane Pendleton
- Pinkney Scruggs
- Gottlieb Hoffmann
- Colonel Archibald Rhett
- Thomas Jefferson Haskins
- Lem Hightower
- Clara Winthrop
- Andrew Jackson Pettigrew
- Scipio Hargrove
- Cato Manning
- Ephraim Shattuck
- Thad Rowlett
- Bud Rountree
- Lucy Wickham
- Thaddeus J. Whitcomb
- Major Ambrose Kimball
- Francis Marion Lockhart
- Dennis Mulcahy
- Heinrich Eberhardt
- Pierre Boudreaux
- Moses Freeman
- Elijah Hartwell
- Jedediah Stockbridge
- Ambrose Kittredge
- Hiram Lovejoy
- Silas Holbrook
- Cyrus Wadsworth
- Rufus Peabody
- Amos Sanborn
- Obadiah Tilden
- Garrett Finnegan
- Lawrence Gallagher
- Bernard Sullivan
- Wilton Bozeman
- Nurse Clara Hobart
- Willis Caudill
- Doak Boyd
- Dudley Sanborn
- Jairus Brackett
- Jozef Krzyzanowski
- Thaddeus "Stonefist" Hollis
- Newton Ballard
- Joanna Tillinghast
- Lillie Belle Stegall
- Ovide Chauvin
- Ichabod Bartlett
- Gwilym Penry
- Ira Bradstreet
- Marcellus Tweed
- Johann Gerlach
- Onésime Babineaux
- Rawley Abbott
- Lewis Cass Tumlin
- Lovisa Dunklee
- Silence Redfield
- Elihu Kellogg
- Lizzie Dabney
- Minnie Braxton
- Jane Brayton
- Avis Hazard
- William Tell Stroud
- Russell Hawes
- Mattie Caldwell
- Barent Staats
- Evan Llewellyn
- Carl Steinmetz
- Alcide Landry
- Dorsey Clodfelter
- Surgeon Erastus Blaisdell
- Beverly Mason
- Gustav Dreyer
- Jarvis Ledford
- Willard Goodale
- Drayton Heyward
- Nimrod Ferree
- Thankful Rowell
- Absalom Pruitt
- Jemima Armstrong
- Milton Lemmond
- Wendell Colby
- Mehitable Sanborn
- Israel Putnam Corliss
- Hiram B. Overbay
- Jeptha Ewing
- Annis Hubbard
- Joab Whittemore
- Clarinda Bolles
- Sergeant Patrick Lynch
- Wylie Ferguson
- Sergeant Moses Freeland
- Private Absalom Tidwell
- Mercy Ballard
- Hez Yarbrough
- Erik Sandberg
- Matron Dorcas Pettengill
- Peter Vrooman
- Silas H. Crowell
- Mary Frances Mabry
- Moses Pillsbury
- Laszlo Szabo
- Zeruiah Swett
- Titus Harrell
- Isaac Bogardus
- Gunnar Thorsen
- Levi Cushing
- Cyrus "Deacon" Mead
- Dwight Buxton
- Hepzibah Carver
- Bascom Lyle
- Bushrod Pendleton
- Kazimierz Dombrowski
- Anstis Carpenter
- Guy Morehouse
- Corporal Jasper Haines
- Hiram "Preacher" Goins
- Herbert Z. Blodgett
- Idella Scruggs
- Edwin L. Brumfield
- Jupiter Ellison
- Delphia Hargrove
- Phillis Newman
- Lyman Tisdale
- Boone McCoy
- Colonel Thomas Cavanagh
- Green Ledbetter
- Philander Hubbell
- Thankful Barrows
- Micah Ashcroft
- Zimri Gage
- Emil Hartung
- Donald Farquhar
- Anton Weidemann
- Sven Halvorsen
- Léonce Prudhomme
- Freeman Perkins
- Royal Dunbar
- Deidamia Brackett
- Sarah Frances Yarbrough
- Sophia Buchanan
- Washington Ferrell
- Morgan Vaughan
- Franklin Pierce Kearns
- Lieutenant Thaddeus Prescott
- Clarissa Dorsey
- Eliza Ann Satterfield
- Shadrack Whisenant
- Colonel Cyrus Wainwright
- Catherine Doherty
- Eli Thurston
- General Hezekiah Farnsworth
- Narcissa Bassett
- Lewis Meredith
- Huldah Greenough
- Cudjo Bright
- Custis Fitzhugh
- Lucinda Merriweather
- Leafy Tuck
- Estella Hicks
- Otto Brandt
- Color Sergeant Isaiah Goodwin
- Comfort Bickford
- August Zimmermann
- Dinah Liberty
- Gershom Coffin
- Henry Clay Strickland
- Barnabas Tuttle
- Squire Buchanan
- Domenico Pascucci
- Wesley C. Goins
- Octavia Plumley
- Julia Fauntleroy
- Ruth Boatwright
- Desire Lombard
- Alfred Grigsby
- Elmer Hazen
- Beverly Tucker Lightfoot
- Asa Putnam
- Tipton Ballew
- Hopestill Tweed
- Jeremiah Dougherty
- Colonel Lucius Beverley
- Sallie Pickett
- Absalom Brumley
- Joshua Bannister
- Antonio Bellucci
- Asa Mott
- Delos Cowles
- Owen Brannigan
- Zachary Wynn
- Lafayette "Fate" Hobbs
- Oren Blanchard
- Isaac N. Tolliver
- Lavinia Pruitt
- Ludwig Pfeiffer
- Rudolph Metzger
- Nathan Cogswell
- Asenath Risley
- Kinchen Battle
- Marcus Thistlewood
- Nurse Harriet Gilman
- Ravenel Manigault
- Phelim Hogan
- Cullen Tarpley
- Sergeant Ezekiel Pruitt
- Victorine Mouton
- Columbus "Lum" Strickland
- Louisa Wadsworth
- Camille Delacroix
- Hosmer Peck
- Alonzo Penfield
- Enos Wheelock
- Calvin Winthrop
- Marguerite Boudreaux
- Hezekiah Dwight
- Obadiah "Black Obie" Sealy
- Eugene Donovan
- Numa Guidry
- Hamlet Nance
- Louvenia Montgomery
- Sim Wofford
- Tennessee Odom
- Elijah "Old Flint" Prewitt
- Job Farnsworth
- Calhoun Pickens
- Garrett Montgomery
- Malinda Ferguson
- John Wesley Calloway
- Hosea Dillard
- Alfred Blount
- Emile Villeré
- Sosthène Romero
- Lois Ellsworth
- Esther Gentry
- Konrad Reinhardt
- Cornelius Doherty
- Nancy Ferrell
- Jules LeBlanc
- Lucien Mouledous
- Captain Heinrich Steinbrenner
- Silas "Swamp Fox" Ledford
- Alfred E. Tidwell
- Hippolyte Hebert
- Adelaide Eure
- Amasa Gale
- Cornelius Ten Eyck
- Frederika Hoffmann
- Bugler Jonah Sprague
- Zebulon Whipple
- Minerva Grigsby
- Captain Beverly Randolph
- Asbury Whitehurst
- Theodora Fenner
- Winfield Scott Hanes
- Jonah Ridgeway
- Hans Christian Mork
- Mabel Penfield
- Lucretia Stebbins
- Rhoda Sherwood
- Zeke Purcell
- Zadock Ambler
- Ransom Yancey
- Dozier Pike
- Clémence Broussard
- Theodor Schirmer
- Arthur Q. Hadley
- Nancy Caroline Faison
- Lars Gundersen
- Augustus Redfield
- Cyrus W. Ledbetter
- Buford Mabry
- Orville S. Hazelwood
- Gilbert Gookin
- Benoni Carver
- Angus MacLeod
- Captain Dennis Flaherty
- Bernhard Eckhardt
- Azélie Fontenot
- Betsy Taliaferro
- Crockett Houston
- Griffith Bowen
- Madison Starnes
- Alexander Crawford
- Jonah Aldrich
- Rose Mercer
- Elizabeth Catherine Royall
- Susannah Ledbetter
- Evangeline Mangum
- Achille Thibodeaux
- Jeremiah Cotesworth
- Ellsworth Fisk
- Robert Emmet Flanagan
- Luigi Ferraro
- Major Alcide Richard
- Corporal Elias Hackett
- Uriah Pettibone
- Stark Blakely
- Aaron Newhall
- Missouri Yancey
- Oscar Heck
- Wade Tazewell
- Telemachus Gault
- Private Solomon Justice
- Elizabeth Thornbury
- Delphus Tanksley
- Lum Satterwhite
- Mahlon Risley
- Darius Farrar
- Dietrich Vogel
- Madison Pickett
- Manasseh Hatch
- Abel Greer
- Mumford Harrison
- Marcus A. Strickland
- Nabby Tillotson
- Eleazar Dyer
- Hagar Weeks
- Bartholomew Shanahan
- Amos "Whistling" Tuttle
- Arabella Mead
- Salvatore Rinaldi
- Ignatius Plowman
- Rebecca Tilden
- Relief Kittredge
- Truman Dearborn
- Philippa Bascomb
- Eleazer Darby
- Thirza Nutting
- Lafayette Waddell
- Martin Quinn
- Clinton Suggs
- Anders Bjornstad
- Abraham Delaney
- Quash Mercer
- Horace Fairbanks
- Seabury Hazard
- Osmyn Hyde
- Waitstill Hosmer
- Margaret Mulcahy
- Ithamar Rundlett
- Asa McAllister
- Caroline Tuttle
- Odile Guidry
- Ira Byrum
- Chauncey Baldwin
- Eliphalet Nutting
- Dossey Newsom
- Frederick Bascomb
- Barnwell Huger
- Lachlan Menzies
- Gibson Hoke
- Theodosia Upham
- Elbert Kinsolving
- Malachy Costigan
- Adolph Schaefer
- Delia Ashby
- Ezekiel "Tall Zeke" Bannister
- Shelby Cocke
- Lou Ella Hightower
- Wilkes Rountree
- Jefferson Tate
- Abe Vandiver
- Sophronia Greenleaf
- Daniel Webster Overbay
- Perley Wiggin
- Rufus Pinkston
- Lorenzo Hawley
- Knud Amundsen
- Cornelia Hartwell
- Philo Humphreys
- Quinton Eure
- Josiah "Bulldog" Crowder
- Garland Faison
- Jubal Hatfield
- Napoleon "Pole" Gatlin
- Levi Angell
- Philomena Rafferty
- Hugh O'Rourke
- Josephine Clayborne
- Patience Stamper
- Prince Albert Weeks
- Martin Van Buren Akers
- Isabella Brewster
- Caesar Blackwell
- Primus Sealy
- Wilhelm Faulhaber
- Nathaniel Greene Hadley
- Kate Rutledge
- Zilpha Bellamy
- Nils Lindquist
- Peder Rasmussen
- Milly Rawlings
- Nehemiah Goodrich
- Redmond Cassidy
- Franz Osterhaus
- Pascal Sutphin
- Ernst Kreutzer
- Lieutenant Wiley Burress
- Ewing Patterson
- Jonas Upham
- Hannibal Rawlings
- Myles Hanratty
- Janos Kovacs
- Wilbur Gentry
- Fernando Parmenter
- Zachary Taylor Brumfield
- Roxana Coffin
- Barzillai Mead
- Chloe Freeland
- Tyler Hotchkiss
- Dorcas Doolittle
- Hattie Tolliver
- Sumner Ladd
- Pinckney Greer
- Betsey Hyde
- Albert Spofford
- Hardin Royall
- Elisha Blevins
- Abigail Whipple
- Hezekiah Logan
- Colin Moncrief
- Juno Bannister
- Marion Satterfield
- Mary Ann Whitlock
- James Madison Crowder
- Rutger Van Wyck
- Ancil Clodius
- Harriet Lovejoy
- Zenas Crowell
- Arkansas Rountree
- Content Arnold
- Narcisse Dupuy
- Emeline Goodrich
- Duncan Fraser
- Olive Wheelock
- Amanda Hazelwood
- Winnie Whitfield
- Wiley Ratliff
- Huw Prothero
- Almira Bartlett
- Ellen Shanahan
- Achsah Hatch
- Hester Hawes
- Jube Hollingsworth
- Ezekiel Sprague
- Johanna Brannigan
- Permelia Crabtree
- Welcome Spooner
- Montgomery Byrd
- Marcus Mangum
- Noah Fenner
- Byrd Taliaferro
- Shadrach Bumpus
- Christian Kessler
- DeWitt Clinton Harlow
- Isaac Newman
- Daniel Mulligan
- Jared Treadwell
- Hollis Bickford
- Drummer Boy Eli Tuck
- Lafayette Bellamy
- Captain Josiah Ashworth
- Wilhelmina Eberhardt
- Abram Hasbrouck
- Patrick Keegan
- Ada Middleton
- Lucian Oglesby
- Ora Lee Whisenant
- Leander Gilchrist
- Augusta Pfeiffer
- Weston Brayton
- Luther G. Ratliff
- Joel Stickney
- Elijah P. Ridgeway
- Malcolm Ross
- Sabra Tibbetts
- Fanny Breckinridge
- Cy Birdsong
- Florian Hausmann
- Alvah Merriweather
- Savannah Lyle
- Euphémie Landry
- Charity Hatcher
- Hosea Stebbins
- Aristide Mouton
- Linus Bissell
- Abner Doolittle
- Ebenezer Sturgis
- Porcher Ravenel
- Aurelia Suggs
- Fergus Crichton
- Carolina Gilchrist
- Texanna Vandiver
- Gustave Beauchamp
- Reuben Alden
- Major Archibald Rutledge
- Orlando Kirkpatrick
- Seth Cale
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