English Place Name Generator

English place names are a thousand years of layered languages, and the trick to inventing one is to respect the layers. Most settlement names are Old English: a person, tribe or feature plus a habitation word such as -ton, -ham, -worth, -stead, -bury, -ford, -ley or -field, which gives Dunstanworth, Kedlesworth and Larkstoke. North and east of Watling Street the Danes added -by, -thorpe, -thwaite and -beck (Gillingsby, Lambthorpe), the Cornish kept Tre-, Pen- and Pol-, and the Normans stapled their surnames onto manors they were granted, producing Okeford Fitzpaine and Redmarley D'Abitot. Church Latin supplied Magna, Parva, Regis, Abbas and the glorious cum and juxta.

But a map has far more than villages on it, and this generator covers the rest. Lakeland gives fells, pikes, tarns, hauses and knotts (Scarth Gap, Blea Tarn, Rannerdale Knotts); Dartmoor and Bodmin give tors, pools and clapper bridges; the chalk country gives downs, beacons, hangers and bottoms; the fens give droves, washes, sluices and Forty Foot drains; the coast gives nesses, hoes, bights and quays. Then there are the named buildings and fragments of parish that fill in the gaps: Wyckham Lodge, Hollowshott Farm, Ashcott Rectory, Goose Eye, Potten End.

Choose the feature type first, then the region, and the name will place a reader before you describe a single hedge.