Faerie Name Generator

The spelling "faerie" signals the old, literary side of fairy lore. It is the spelling of Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, of Victorian fairy painting and of border ballads like Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer, so faerie names tend to be either folkloric (the sídhe queens Cliodhna, Áine and Oonagh; the Welsh Gwyn ap Nudd and Blodeuwedd; the Arthurian Morgan le Fay and Nimue) or literary. Shakespeare gave A Midsummer Night's Dream a court of Titania, Oberon and Puck attended by tiny servants named after common things: Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth and Mustardseed. Spenser named his faerie queen Gloriana and her knights Belphoebe and Britomart. J. M. Barrie and Disney later added Tinker Bell, the Blue Fairy and the good fairies Flora, Fauna and Merryweather.

A convincing faerie name therefore does one of three things. It uses a real Celtic or Arthurian name with genuine folklore behind it; it names the faerie after a hedgerow plant, insect or bird in the Shakespearean manner (Harebell, Cowslip, Speedwell, Nightjar); or it uses an old-fashioned English or Welsh given name paired with a whimsical rustic surname, like Elspeth Moonwaith or Cuthbert Fernwhistle, which gives the sense of a faerie who has lived at the edge of a village for four hundred years.

The list below covers all three, plus a set of standalone vintage names and nature words you can recombine into your own faerie folk.