Empress Name Generator

An empress outranks a queen, and her name usually shows it. Real imperial courts bolted extra machinery onto a personal name: Rome added the honorific Augusta (Livia Augusta, Julia Maesa Augusta), Byzantium used the name of a great house (Komnene, Doukaina, Palaiologina) or the epithet Porphyrogenita for a daughter born in the purple, Persia used Shahbanu, the Ottomans Valide Sultan for an emperor's mother, Mongol courts Khatun, and Ethiopia Itege. Chinese and Japanese empresses are mostly remembered by posthumous or era names (Empress Dowager Cixi, Empress Suiko), so the word Empress is part of the name rather than a label in front of it.

Fantasy writers borrow the same devices. An invented empress sounds right when she has a three-syllable given name with an older, heavier feel (Seraphel, Isaveth, Theodosia, Orsolya), a dynastic surname or house (Vantoris, Draumar, Castellane), and one of three finishing touches: a regnal number (Calanthe VII), a territorial style (of the Ninefold Throne), or an earned epithet (the Unyielding, the Gentle Tyrant). Use one touch, not all three.

The list opens with original fantasy empresses in those styles, then runs through Roman Augustae, Byzantine dynasts, Persian, Chinese and Japanese courts, Mughal and Ottoman harems, Russian tsaritsas, Habsburg Kaiserinnen, Ethiopian Itege, Kushite Kandakes, Mongol Khatuns and Maya and Inca royal women, closing with darker gothic fantasy names.