Male Witch Name Generator

Male witches have a long history that fiction tends to forget. Around a quarter of those tried for witchcraft in early modern Europe were men, and English villages had their cunning men alongside wise women: charm-makers, finders of lost goods and unbewitchers. Their names were simply the names of the period, which is why Obadiah, Ezekiel, Josiah, Jedediah, Silas and Thaddeus sound so witchy to modern ears; the Puritan and Old Testament register carries the whole atmosphere of Salem and Pendle with it.

The surname does the conjuring. The strongest male witch names pair a plain old-fashioned first name with a surname that could be an English hamlet (Ashcombe, Fenwick, Grimshaw, Winterbourne), a baneful herb (Wormwood, Henbane, Hemlock, Mandrake), a carrion bird (Crowe, Corvus, Rook, Shrike) or a compound that hints at the craft (Blackcandle, Cauldwell, Hexley, Moonwright). Anglo-Saxon survivals like Wolfric, Oswin and Leofric, Welsh and Gaelic names like Emrys, Gwydion and Taliesin, and Latin mouthfuls like Septimus and Ambrosius all read as older, stranger and more learned.

For covens outside the English tradition the same logic works in German, Italian, Spanish, French, Polish, Russian and Norse, where surnames meaning raven, wolf, owl, mist, night and black forest do the work Wormwood does in English.