Familiar Name Generator

A familiar is the animal or spirit companion bound to a witch, and its name usually says something about how the pair met. In the English witch-trial records that gave us the idea, familiars had oddly homely names: Pyewacket, Vinegar Tom, Greymalkin, Sack and Sugar, Jarmara. Those names sound like they were overheard in a kitchen rather than invented in a laboratory, and that ordinariness is what makes them unsettling. A cat called Tibbs who happens to talk is scarier than one called Darkfang.

Modern familiars pull from three main wells. The first is folklore and mythology (Hecate, Circe, Nyx, Puck), which suits an old, knowing creature that has served more than one witch. The second is the hedge-witch garden: herb and plant names like Rue, Vervain, Mugwort, Foxglove and Hemlock, which are especially good for toads, hares and mice. The third is the night sky and its moods, giving you Vesper, Nocturne, Solstice and Moonbeam for owls, bats and black cats.

The best familiar names fit the animal's temperament as much as the witch's practice. A raven takes a sharp two-syllable name; a plump toad wants something soft and comic; a bound spirit deserves a name that hints it existed long before the witch did.