Realistic Name Generator

A realistic name is one a reader accepts without noticing it. That usually means a first name that was genuinely popular in the decade the person was born and a surname that reflects a real family history: occupational English surnames such as Whitaker or Fletcher, Spanish patronymics such as Rodriguez and Mendoza, Polish, Nigerian, Vietnamese and Korean surnames spelled the way families in the English-speaking world actually spell them. The names here pair those elements the way a census page does, so Harold Stansfield reads like a retired machinist and Paisley Gunderson reads like a ten-year-old.

The list deliberately spans generations and backgrounds. Pre-war names such as Mildred, Clarence and Bernice sit beside 1980s staples like Jennifer, Brian and Stephanie and current favourites such as Aiden, Harper and Mateo. There are also ordered East Asian names (Kang Jin Ho, Chen Weimin), Arabic, South Asian, Turkish, Persian and West African names, because a realistic cast of characters or a plausible sample dataset rarely looks like one suburb.

None of the names belong to a specific public figure; they are plausible combinations rather than copied identities, which makes them safe for mock-ups, placeholder accounts, writing exercises and UX wireframes where lorem-ipsum names look sloppy.