Hawk Name Generator

Hawk names tend to come from four places. The first is the bird itself: a red-tailed hawk invites Rusty, Copper, Sienna or Ember, a Harris's hawk gets Harriet or Hank, a Cooper's hawk becomes Coop, and a sharp-shinned hawk is Sharpie before you can stop yourself. The second is the air the bird lives in: Zephyr, Gale, Cirrus, Thermal, Tailwind, Updraft. Falconers also borrow their own jargon, so Eyas (a nestling), Tiercel (a male) and Stoop (the dive) turn up as names.

The third source is myth. Hawks and falcons were sacred to Horus and Ra in Egypt, Freyja owned a falcon cloak in Norse lore, Garuda and Jatayu are the great birds of Hindu epic, and Circe, Nisus and Daedalion were all turned into hawks in Greek and Roman stories. The fourth is pop culture and real birds with fans: Pale Male of Central Park, Big Red at Cornell, Kes, Frightful from My Side of the Mountain, Mabel from H Is for Hawk, and comic heroes like Hawkeye and Hawkgirl.

A good hawk name is short enough to call across a field and hard enough to match the bird. One or two syllables with a crisp consonant (Talon, Skree, Vrask, Kestra) carries better than anything soft.