Hyena Name Generator

Hyena names tend to come from one of four places. The first is East and Southern Africa, where the spotted hyena lives: Swahili gives Fisi (hyena), Kicheko (laughter), Usiku (night) and Mfupa (bone); Zulu gives Impisi; Hausa gives Kura; Amharic gives Jibb. Because spotted hyena clans are led by females, Zulu and Sotho names such as Nandi, Nomvula and Naledi suit a matriarch especially well.

The second source is story. Disney's hyenas (Shenzi, Banzai, Ed, Janja, Jasiri, Kamari, Azizi) are Swahili words or Swahili-flavoured coinages, which is why they sound right; Bouki, Suruku and Kishi are trickster hyenas from West African and Angolan folklore; Bouda is the Ethiopian werehyena; the hyenas of Harar, fed by hand each night, have names like Willi, Koti and Tukwondilli.

The third is the animal itself: its whoop and cackle (Giggles, Whoop, Laughing Jill), its spots and stripes (Madoa, Mistari, Polka, Brindle), its bone-cracking jaws (Gnash, Scrapjaw, Bonecrusher) and the places it roams (Serengeti, Etosha, Kalahari). The fourth is plain character, the nicknames a zookeeper or a fan artist reaches for, from Old Scar-Snout to Madam Marrow. Pick the register that fits your hyena and the setting it lives in.