Feudal Japan Name Generator

Feudal Japan runs from the founding of the Kamakura shogunate in 1185 to the unification under Tokugawa Ieyasu around 1600, and names changed noticeably across those four centuries. Early figures still carried the old clan particle, so the first shogun was Minamoto no Yoritomo and his rival Taira no Kiyomori. By the Muromachi and Sengoku periods the particle had dropped away and the standard form was a family name followed by a two-character formal given name (nanori) built from inherited elements: Takeda Shingen's retainers include Baba Nobuharu, Yamagata Masakage and Kosaka Masanobu, and the shared Nobu, Masa and Kage elements mark lineage and loyalty. Family names are overwhelmingly place names (Hosokawa, Asakura, Chosokabe, Shimazu), and a name like Ashikaga or Hojo instantly tells a reader which house someone belongs to.

Warriors were only part of the picture. Monks took Buddhist names such as Ikkyu Sojun, Rennyo or Takuan Soho, and many lords took one on retirement (Shingen and Kenshin are both monastic names). High-born women are recorded as Tomoe Gozen, Hojo Masako, Nohime or Komatsuhime, with -gozen and -hime as honorifics, while townswomen were Otsuru, Okiku or Oume. Commoners went by a single given name such as Gonbei, Tarozaemon or Heisuke. This list mixes all of those classes with period-plausible originals for novels, games and tabletop campaigns.