Solar System Name Generator

Real star systems are named in a handful of predictable ways, and using those conventions is the quickest route to a believable galaxy map. Bright stars keep their ancient Arabic, Greek and Latin proper names: Vega, Rigel, Betelgeuse, Zubenelgenubi. Fainter naked-eye stars carry Bayer designations, a Greek letter plus the genitive of the constellation, so Epsilon Eridani means the fifth-brightest star in Eridanus and Tau Ceti sits in Cetus. Everything dimmer is known by a catalog: Gliese 581, Wolf 359, Lalande 21185, Ross 128, or by the telescope that found its planets, as in Kepler-186 and TRAPPIST-1.

Strictly speaking there is only one Solar System (ours, named for Sol), and astronomers say star system or planetary system for the rest. In science fiction the terms blur, and colonists would almost certainly rename their new home star. That gives you three tiers of names to play with: the cold catalog number the survey used, the Bayer name astronomers know, and the warm name settlers adopt, like Hearth, Providence or New Sol. Naming a system after a mythological figure (Astraea, Tyche, Nemesis) is a nod to how our own planets and moons were named.

The list mixes the twenty nearest real stars, famous exoplanet hosts, dozens of Bayer-style names and original invented systems so you can pick a register that suits a hard sci-fi novel or a sweeping space opera.