Mercenary Name Generator

Mercenary names carry a reputation the way a banner does. Medieval and fantasy sellswords are usually a plain given name plus an earned epithet: Sigurd Halfhand, Ivar Ninefingers, Wat the Butcher. The epithet describes a wound, a habit, or a crime, and it is given by other people, never chosen. Real fourteenth-century captains followed the same pattern, from Geoffroi Tête-Noire and Aymerigot Bras-de-Fer to the Englishman John Hawkwood, whom the Italians simply called Giovanni Acuto.

Renaissance condottieri like Bartolomeo Colleoni, Muzio Sforza, and Braccio da Montone used full aristocratic names, and German landsknecht captains such as Georg von Frundsberg gave the trade a Germanic flavor. Modern soldiers of fortune are different again: real names like Mad Mike Hoare and Bob Denard sit alongside callsigns, and a merc in a thriller or tactical shooter is usually a hard, one-syllable first name (Cole, Dutch, Rook) or a trade nickname (Doc, Sparks, Wrench) attached to a short surname.

The list below mixes all three eras, with fantasy sellswords, historical captains from England, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and the Islamic world, modern operators with callsigns, and a healthy set of women mercenaries, so you can cast an entire company or find one memorable hired blade.