Pond Name Generator

Real pond names are humble, which is the trick to inventing one that sounds right. On a New England topo map you find Mill Pond, Long Pond, Round Pond, Mud Pond, Spectacle Pond and Halfmoon Pond, named for shape, bottom or what stood beside them. Next come wildlife and plants (Heron Pond, Beaver Pond, Lily Pond, Pickerel Pond), then the family who dug or owned it (Baker's Pond, Coffin Pond, Nickerson Pond). Cape Cod's glacial kettle ponds gave us Gull Pond, Slough Pond and Herring Pond; Thoreau's Walden Pond is the same plain style made famous.

Britain uses generic words that signal age and region: mere and pool in the Midlands (Ellesmere, Whitemere, Bomere Pool), dewponds on the chalk downs, stew ponds at monasteries, and the village duck pond or horsepond on the green. Japan names garden ponds with -ike (Shinobazu Pond, Sarusawa Pond), France with étang, Germany with Weiher and Teich.

Backyard and farm ponds use a different register. Owners name them after the kids, the dog, the view or a joke (Lake Wannabee, Duckingham Palace, The Back Forty Pond), while koi and garden ponds lean calm and seasonal (Moon Viewing Pond, Lotus Pond). Fantasy ponds borrow the old English forms: Mirrormere or the Pool of Sighs feels ancient because it sounds like a place on an old map.