Sailor Name Generator

A sailor's name in fiction usually does two jobs: it tells you where he shipped from and what the rest of the crew calls him. Historical crews were drawn from coastlines with strong maritime traditions, so a roster sounds right when it mixes Cornish, Irish, Hebridean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Greek, Breton, Caribbean and Polynesian surnames rather than pulling every name from one place. Nantucket and New Bedford whalers added a distinct layer of Old Testament first names (Obed, Peleg, Barzillai) on Quaker family names like Coffin, Starbuck and Folger, which is why those still read as 'whaling ship' today.

The second layer is the deck nickname. Shipboard names come from jobs (Sparks for the radio operator, Chips for the carpenter, Doc for anyone who can stitch a wound), from gear and rigging (Halyard, Marlinspike, Binnacle), and from physical quirks or luck (One-Eyed, Stumpy, Lucky). A nickname nearly always rides on a short, plain first name: Barnacle Bill, Salty Sam, Long Tom. Ranks work the same way and do a lot of characterization for free; Bosun Red O'Rourke and Able Seaman Rory Tierney are different people before they speak.

The list below gives you all of it: plain seafaring full names, nicknamed old salts, ranked crew from cabin boy to commodore, and women of the sea for historical or fantasy settings.