Galaxy Name Generator

Real galaxies are named in three main ways, and the best fictional galaxy names borrow from all three. The oldest names describe what astronomers saw through the eyepiece: the Whirlpool, the Sombrero, the Cigar, the Black Eye, the Cartwheel. These shape names are vivid, memorable, and instantly tell you something about the object. The second convention is the catalogue designation (M31, NGC 4414, IC 1101, Arp 220), which sounds cold and technical and works well for hard sci-fi or a survey ship's logbook. The third names galaxies after their discoverers or the constellation they sit in: Bode's Galaxy, Hoag's Object, the Sculptor Dwarf, the Fornax Dwarf.

When inventing a galaxy for a novel or campaign, combine a descriptor with a morphological word: spiral, barred spiral, elliptical, lenticular, irregular, dwarf, ring, cloud. "Kestrel Spiral" or "Cetus Lenticular" sounds like something a real survey would log, while "Serpent's Coil" or "Drowned Lantern" sounds like a name explorers gave it after seeing it up close. Larger structures (clusters, superclusters, filaments, walls, voids) give you scale beyond a single galaxy, and naming those after mythic primordials such as Ymir, Tartarus, or Ouroboros fits the immensity.

This list mixes genuine catalogued galaxies with invented ones that follow those same rules, so you can pull a real name for grounding or a fictional one for territory your characters are the first to chart.