Dryad Name Generator

Dryads come from Greek mythology, where the word literally means 'oak nymph' (drys is Greek for oak). Over time it came to cover any tree spirit, and Greek poets gave individual dryads names that were often simply the tree they inhabited: Karya (walnut), Balanos (oak), Syke (fig), Ptelea (elm), Aigeiros (black poplar), Kraneia (cornel), Morea (mulberry) and Ampelos (vine). These eight are the Hamadryades, the daughters of Oxylos, whose lives were bound to a single tree. Other famous tree nymphs include Daphne, who became the laurel to escape Apollo, Pitys who became a pine, and Eurydice, wife of Orpheus, who was herself a dryad.

A good dryad name therefore does one of two things. It either draws on genuine Greek nymph names, which are soft, vowel-rich and end in -a, -e or -is (Ianthe, Chloris, Melinoe, Oenone), or it evokes a specific tree in a way that still sounds like a person's name: Rowanwyn, Hazelith, Cypriane, Willomena. Avoid names that are just two nouns glued together; a dryad is a character with a personality, not a place on a map.

The names here range from attested mythological nymphs and dryads to invented tree-flavoured names and paired names with a grove epithet, so you can find a fit for a Greek-myth retelling, a D&D fey encounter, or a fantasy novel's forest guardian.