Port City Name Generator

Real port cities are named the way every city is, but with a bias toward water: Portsmouth is the mouth of the port, Bremerhaven is Bremen's harbour, Copenhagen is the "merchants' harbour", and Alexandria, Constantinople, and Port Elizabeth honour the ruler who founded them. Colonial powers left "Port" plus a name across the globe (Port Louis, Port Said, Port Moresby, Port-au-Prince), which is why that pattern immediately reads as an important, deliberately founded harbour rather than a fishing village that grew.

For fiction, the most useful patterns are: "Port [Name]" for founded or colonial cities; compound English names ending in -mouth, -haven, -gate, -port, or -quay for old, organically grown harbours; and single invented names with a Mediterranean, Arabic, Norse, or Iberian sound (Sarantium, Al-Mirah, Sørhavn, Casteldura) for great trading capitals in a fantasy world. Each choice tells the reader who built the city and roughly when.

A good port city name is short enough to fit on a merchant's manifest and distinct enough that no other city on the map could be confused with it. If two of your ports both end in -haven, rename one.