Native Tribe Name Generator

Roughly 476 million people belong to more than 5,000 distinct Indigenous peoples across some 90 countries. Their names for themselves very often mean 'the people' or 'real people': Inuit, Diné, Anishinaabe, Ainu, Kalaallit and Yolngu all translate roughly that way. Names given by outsiders tend to describe location, language or, sometimes, insults that have since been dropped, which is why Eskimo has given way to Inuit and Yup'ik, Lapp to Sámi, and Bushmen to San or the specific group name Ju/'hoansi.

Many peoples nest inside larger groupings. Māori is the collective name, while iwi (tribes) like Ngāpuhi, Ngāi Tahu and Tūhoe are the working political units. Maya covers more than 30 language groups including K'iche', Kaqchikel and Yucatec. Aboriginal Australians belong to hundreds of nations, among them the Noongar, Yolngu, Arrernte and Wiradjuri, and Torres Strait Islanders are a separate people again. In Siberia and the Russian north, dozens of small nations such as the Nenets, Evenki, Chukchi and Sakha keep reindeer-herding and hunting cultures alive.

The list here spans the Americas, Africa, Oceania, Asia and the Arctic and gives preference to each people's own name where it is widely used. Use it as a starting point for research, a geography quiz, or to anchor a story in a real place and culture.