Humanoid Species Name Generator

The most convincing humanoid species names behave like real-world demonyms: they carry an ending that marks "people of" and a root that could plausibly be a homeworld, a founding clan, or a word in the species' own language. Star Trek's Bajorans come from Bajor, Mass Effect's Asari and Turians take Latin-flavored plural endings, and Star Wars' Twi'leks and Zabraks use a hard consonant cluster to sound alien to English ears. What all of these avoid is the lazy pattern of a random English word plus -ian (Crystalians, Quantumites), which reads as placeholder text rather than a culture.

Endings do a lot of the work. Soft vowel endings (-ari, -eshi, -ani, -une) suggest an old, cultured, or diplomatic species; clipped consonant endings (-ek, -uk, -ath, -oth) suggest hardier or more martial peoples; Latin-style plurals (-idae, -ae, -im) suggest a scholarly or hive-like species catalogued by outsiders. Star-derived names (Aldebarani, Rigelians, Denebi) are a quick way to tie a species to a real place in the sky, and readers accept them instantly.

Decide whether the name is what the species calls itself or what others call them. An endonym is often short and vowel-heavy (Kessari); an exonym given by human explorers might be a star name plus a suffix or a plain descriptor. Using both in your setting is a small detail that makes the galaxy feel inhabited.