Dullahan Name Generator

The dullahan (Irish Gan Ceann, "without a head") is the headless rider of Irish folklore: a figure on a black horse who carries its own grinning head under one arm, cracks a whip made of a human spine and drives the cóiste bodhar, the silent death coach. When the dullahan stops and speaks a name, that person dies. It hates gold, and its head glows like a lantern on dark roads.

The most authentic approach is an ordinary Irish name: folklore never names the dullahan, so a mortal name it carried in life (Brónach Ní Aodha, Cathal Ó Cinnéide) makes it feel like a real dead person rather than a monster type. Gaelic spellings with Ó, Mac, Ní and Nic read as old; anglicised forms (Fiachra Kane, Dearbhla Muldowney) suit a modern or urban-fantasy setting. Irish words for black, shadow and death (dubh, scáth, bás, marbh) work as epithets, and place-bound titles such as the Rider of Cnoc Meadha root the creature in a specific hill or bog.

Durarara!!'s Celty Sturluson gave anime dullahans a short Celtic first name with a Norse surname, Sleepy Hollow added the Hessian horseman, and tabletop games turned the dullahan into a headless knight, so Sir Dubhán Coldhelm is as valid as Gan Ceann.