Ugly Name Generator

An ugly name works on the ear before the eye. The formula that Roald Dahl (Miss Trunchbull, Augustus Gloop, Aunt Spiker), Charles Dickens (Uriah Heep, Wackford Squeers) and Terry Pratchett (Nobby Nobbs) all understood is the same one used in Harry Potter's Dursleys and Filch: stack heavy, cramped consonants (gr, sl, sn, bl, gut, ump, ott) and pair a musty, out-of-fashion first name with a surname that suggests bodily functions, damp, rot or squelching. Bertha Wartface is ugly because 'Bertha' already sounds like furniture and 'Wartface' leaves nothing to the imagination.

There are a few sub-styles worth knowing. The Victorian-nursery style uses a real antique given name (Mortimer, Ermintrude, Obadiah, Prunella) with an invented gross surname (Slugg, Blister, Grunt, Puke). The English-village style borrows genuinely real but unfortunate British surnames (Sidebottom, Ramsbottom, Snodgrass, Glasscock, Longbottom, Featherstonehaugh) and lets a rude first name do the damage. The goblin style flips it, using a squelchy nonsense first name (Grubbins, Blorp, Nubbin) with a stiff, respectable surname (Ponsonby, Pinkerton, Fenchurch) for maximum contrast.

Ugly names are useful well beyond insults: they mark a character as comic, low-status or villainous within a syllable, which is why picture books, pantomime, D&D goblins and cartoon bullies lean on them so hard.