Jester Name Generator

Real court jesters had surprisingly ordinary names. Henry VIII's fool was Will Somers, James I kept Archibald Armstrong, and the French kings employed Triboulet and Chicot; only a few, like Patch or Roland le Fartere, went by a nickname. Fiction changed that. Shakespeare gave his fools single, slightly ridiculous names (Feste, Touchstone, Trinculo, Yorick), and Italian commedia dell'arte contributed a whole cast of stock clowns whose names still read as jester shorthand: Arlecchino, Pierrot, Pulcinella, Scaramouche, Columbina.

Modern fantasy jester names usually work in one of three ways. The first is the single motley word: Bauble, Marotte, Coxcomb, Fiddlesticks, Piffle, taken from a fool's costume, props, or the vocabulary of nonsense. The second is the alliterative comic full name, in the tradition of Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek: Peregrine Pratfall, Wilfred Wobblesworth, Godfrey Guffaw. The third is the mock title, echoing the medieval Feast of Fools where a Lord of Misrule or Abbot of Unreason ruled the revels for a day: Prince of Prattle, Duke of Dunces, King of the Bean.

The best jester names have a rhythm you can almost hear bells in. Short, bouncy syllables and hard consonants sound funny; a name that also hints at hidden wit (Touchstone, Riddlesworth, The Wise Fool) reminds the audience that the fool is often the cleverest person at court.