Water Name Generator

Water names come from three overlapping sources, and the strongest ones usually belong to at least one of them. The first is real given names that literally mean sea, river or rain: Marina and Marisol (Latin mare, sea), Nerida (Greek sea nymph), Kai and Moana (Hawaiian for sea and ocean), Talise (a Native American name meaning lovely water), Deniz and Derya (Turkish for sea), Dylan (Welsh, son of the sea) and Morgan or Muriel (Celtic, bright sea). These read as normal names to most ears while carrying the theme underneath.

The second source is mythology. Almost every culture personified its waters: the Greek Nereids and Oceanids (Thetis, Galene, Amphitrite), the Norse sea giants Aegir and Ran, the Inuit sea mother Sedna, the Polynesian gods Tangaroa and Kanaloa, the Vedic river goddess Ganga and the Mesopotamian primordial waters Tiamat and Nammu. Mythic names give an aquatic character weight and history, which is why they are so common for water elementals, sea witches and merfolk royalty.

The third source is plain nature vocabulary used as a name: River, Brook, Rain, Tide, Cascade, Delta, Fjord. Single-word names sit best on characters in a modern or lightly fantastical setting, on pets and on babies, while compound forms such as Stillwater, Wavecrest or Silverbrook work well as surnames or as names for water spirits. Mixing these three types across a cast keeps the theme from feeling repetitive: a merfolk queen named Amphitrite, her daughter Nerissa and a human sailor called Ford all belong to the same world.