Sci-Fi City Name Generator

The most convincing sci-fi city names feel like they were named by the people who built them, not by a marketing department. Real colonists tend to do one of four things: transplant a name from home (New Shanghai, Nova Roma, Neo Tokyo), borrow the local geography (Olympus Mons City, Kraken Mare, Valles Marineris), commemorate the landing (Landfall, First Landing, Anchorhead) or honor a founder or scientist (Sagan, Tereshkova, Le Guin). Each approach tells the reader something about who settled the place and how long ago.

Tone comes from vocabulary and sound. Cyberpunk megacities use layers and districts: the Sprawl, the Stacks, Sector Seven, Undercity. Orbital habitats borrow engineering terms like Torus, Ring, Spindle and Lagrange. Frontier towns sound weathered and Anglo-colonial: Coldharbor, Ashfall, Duskwater. Alien or far-future capitals abandon English altogether and rely on invented phonology such as Ythrael, Ni'ashar or Vorenthal. Mixing these registers on one map instantly makes a setting feel like it has history, with old human towns sitting next to sleek corporate domes and unpronounceable native cities.

Use this generator to seed a colony map, name the capital of a space opera empire, or find the one gritty district name a cyberpunk story needs. Then use the tips below to adapt a favorite to your world.