Middle Eastern Town Name Generator

They are Arabic generic terms: Bir is a well, Ain a spring, Tell an ancient mound of ruins, Deir a monastery, and Kafr a hamlet or small village. Beit means house, Qasr a fort or palace, Ras a headland or cape, Wadi a seasonal riverbed, and Khan a caravanserai. Towns are usually named with one of these plus a qualifier, such as Bir al-Hamra, the red well.

Many are real small towns and villages in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Yemen, Iran and Turkey; others are invented using the same naming elements so they sound right on a map. Place names are not protected by copyright, so either kind can be used in fiction and games.

Persian names often end in -abad (settled place), use Deh (village), Qaleh (fort) or Cheshmeh (spring) as a first word, and link words with -e as in Deh-e Now. Turkish names favor köy (village), kent, pınar (spring), and descriptive colors and terrain words such as Karaköy or Kızılcahamam. Arabic names lean on al- and the generic-plus-qualifier pattern.

Yes. The generic-plus-qualifier pattern is easy to adapt: keep a word like Bir, Ain, Qasr or Deh-e and replace the second part with a name from your own setting, or choose one of the fully invented entries in the list, which were built to sound authentic without pointing to a specific real place.