Mine Name Generator

Real mine names are a record of who staked the claim and how they felt about it. Nineteenth-century Western prospectors named claims after wives, sweethearts and daughters (Molly Kathleen, Little Daisy, Tomboy), after their luck (Lucky Cuss, Last Chance, Hard Luck, Never Say Die), after their hometowns (Kentuck, Little Pittsburg, Ontario) or after birds, stars and gems (Yellow Jacket, Morning Star, Golden Fleece). Corporate mines that came later took plainer names: the Homestake, the Empire, the Anaconda, or simply the Number Six.

British and Cornish naming has its own flavour. Coal mines are collieries or pits, usually named for the village (Gresford Colliery, Senghenydd Pit, Big Pit), while Cornish tin and copper mines are called Wheal, from the Cornish word for a working (Wheal Coates, Wheal Jane, Great Wheal Vor). Underground features have their own vocabulary too: shafts, adits, drifts, stopes, levels and sumps, all of which make excellent name endings.

Fantasy mines borrow the same structure but swap in dwarven and mythic vocabulary: Deepdelve, Ironhold Delving, Mithril Deep, the Sundered Seam. Whether you are naming a ghost-town silver mine for a Western, an abandoned pit for a horror game, or a dwarven hold for a D&D campaign, this list gives you real historical names to draw on alongside invented ones that follow the same conventions.