Scrivener Name Generator

A scrivener was a professional writer-for-hire: a scribe who copied manuscripts, drew up deeds and contracts, kept court rolls and wrote letters for people who could not. In medieval Europe most were monks working in a monastery scriptorium (Brother Eadfrith of Lindisfarne, Brother Matthew Paris), but by the 1300s lay scriveners had their own London guild, the Worshipful Company of Scriveners, and men like Adam Pinkhurst, who copied Chaucer, made a living from the pen. Their names follow the period: Anglo-Saxon (Wulfstan, Leofric, Godwin), Norman (Ranulf, Osbern, Warin), Latin scholarly forms (Cassiodorus, Ordericus) and, in the Renaissance, Italian humanists such as Poggio Bracciolini and Bartolomeo Sanvito.

Occupational surnames are the giveaway. Scriven, Scrivener, Clerk, Penman, Notary, Chartwright and Bookwright all began as job descriptions, and a fictional Master Milo Scriven or Wystan Blackletter tells the reader what he does before he lifts a quill. Titles matter too: Brother or Sister for monastic copyists, Friar for mendicants, Master for a guild scrivener or university clerk, and Sofer, Warraq or Amanuensis for Jewish, Islamic and Roman traditions. Literature has its own scriveners, most famously Melville's Bartleby, Dickens' Bob Cratchit and Uriah Heep.

Use the list for historical novels, D&D and Pendragon campaigns, monastery mysteries, calligraphy studio names, or a pen name for anyone who writes for a living.