Shakespearean Name Generator

Shakespeare did not invent one style of name; he borrowed and adapted four or five, and a convincing Shakespearean name picks one of them deliberately. His Italian and Illyrian comedies run on liquid Italianate names ending in -io, -o and -a: Benvolio, Mercutio, Malvolio, Orsino, Bianca, Viola, Perdita. The Roman plays use real Latin cognomina and praenomina (Brutus, Cassius, Enobarbus, Volumnia, Calpurnia). The English histories use genuine titles and family names, Bolingbroke, Hotspur, Mowbray, Falstaff, while the comic low-life characters get blunt tradesman words as surnames: Bottom, Quince, Snug, Dogberry, Elbow, Froth, Mistress Quickly.

He also made names up from pieces: Miranda (admirable), Jessica, Olivia, Imogen, Florizel and Perdita (the lost one) all appear first or nearly first in his plays, and names like Titania, Oberon and Puck were pulled from folklore and classical poetry. The fairies of A Midsummer Night's Dream are simply Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth and Mustardseed, and the mechanicals are known by their trades.

This generator mixes the canon cast with original names built on those same patterns: Italianate romantic leads, Roman soldiers and matrons, Elizabethan knights and goodwives, comic rustics with descriptive surnames, and a scattering of fairies and shepherds. Use the canon names for quotes, quizzes and pets, and the originals for characters in your own play, novel or role-play.