Wasp Name Generator

Wasps get named very differently from bees. A bee is soft, round and sweet; a wasp is glossy, narrow-waisted and armed, so the best wasp names lean into that edge: stings, needles, darts and zaps, the yellow-and-black warning colours (Amber, Ochre, Saffron, Onyx, Pitch), and a slightly villainous swagger. Latin taxonomy is a surprisingly rich vein here. Vespa is the hornet genus, Vespula and Dolichovespula are the yellowjackets, Polistes are the umbrella-shaped paper wasps, and Sceliphron, Pepsis and Sphex cover mud daubers, tarantula hawks and digger wasps, all of which make handsome character names or nicknames (Vespa, Polly Polistes, Dolly Dolichovespula).

Paper wasps chew wood into pulp to build their nests, so Papyrus, Pulp, Parchment and Paperwing suit a builder character, while the colony's real caste system gives you a foundress queen, sterile workers and late-summer drones. Fictional wasps add recognisable options: Marvel's Wasp (Janet van Dyne and later Hope), Yellowjacket, Waspinator from Beast Wars, Vespiquen from Pokemon and the Green Hornet.

For a mascot or children's book, puns on the word itself work hardest (Wasperina, Waspernicus, Stingerella, Buzzington); for a serious story, a clean genus name or a colour word reads better than a joke.