Gremlin Name Generator

Gremlins started as Royal Air Force folklore in the 1920s and 30s: invisible little creatures blamed for every jammed gun, leaking fuel line and mysteriously loosened bolt. Roald Dahl wrote them up in 1943, complete with female gremlins called Fifinellas and children called Widgets, and Joe Dante's 1984 film gave them names like Gizmo, Stripe, Mohawk and Brain. A good gremlin name still carries both halves of that history: it should sound like something small and nasty chattering in the dark, and it should hint at the particular mischief the creature gets up to.

Phonetically, gremlin names lean on hard consonant clusters (sk, kr, gr, tz), short clipped syllables and a lot of z, x and double letters: Snik, Krix, Grubb, Skreep, Zibbit. Longer names work best as compounds that describe the damage or the grime, which is why Wrenchwhisker, Fuselick, Sootgrin and Scabknuckle feel right while anything elegant feels wrong. Onomatopoeia is fair game too; a gremlin called Glitch, Clunk or Kerplunk is perfectly named.

The list below mixes those styles with nickname-plus-epithet forms like Mungo Nine-Fingers and Grubb Two-Teeth for named villains, so you can populate a D&D workshop, a kids' story, a steampunk engine room or a tabletop horde with gremlins that each sound distinct.