Demon Name Generator

Names this produces

Generated when this page was built, using the same sound system the tool above uses.

• Masculine Garrauoth · Zhethnaithen · Mauragzoul · Zugbuthmauth · Goulrorvumon · Maubzaax · Naulraeb · Groldraog · Mozruxbur · Bounolraumon
• Feminine Noxdouara · Thunmozsaudr · Kexmaiara · Ranzozgoux · Voldoux · Duthaggozh · Maidrzaiala · Baigdroara · Rothuzaeth · Grerkarnerk
• With a title Zennaog the Bargain-Keeper · Bodrnauvr the Unspoken · Mogrketh of the Brass Court · Voxseth of the Ninth Circle · Zudgoumron the Gate-Warden

Most traditional demon names are other people's gods

This is the thing worth knowing before you invent any, because it explains why the traditional names sound the way they do.

A large share of the famous demon names were originally the names of deities belonging to neighbouring or displaced religions. Beelzebub derives from Ba’al Zebub, a Philistine god whose title appears in the Hebrew Bible. Astaroth traces back to Astarte, a goddess worshipped widely across the ancient Near East. The pattern recurs often enough that it is a recognised phenomenon: as one religion supplanted another, the gods of the old one were frequently recast as demons, and they kept their names on the way down.

That history is why the names carry the weight they do. They were not designed to sound frightening — they were designed to sound dignified, in languages that are no longer spoken, and the menace came later. A name built only to sound unpleasant will always feel thinner than one that sounds like it used to be an honour.

If you are inventing demons, this suggests a structure worth stealing. Give the name a quality of faded grandeur rather than pure harshness, and let the horror come from what the bearer does rather than from the consonants.

The Ars Goetia and the grimoire tradition

Nearly every demon list you will encounter traces back to one source, directly or at a remove.

The Lesser Key of Solomon is a seventeenth-century grimoire, and its first section — the Ars Goetia — catalogues seventy-two demons. For each it gives a name, a rank, the number of legions commanded, and a description of what the demon knows or can do. Some teach languages. Some find hidden things. Some are specified as appearing in a particular form.

What makes it so useful to fiction is the bureaucracy. This is not a horde; it is an organisation, with grades and reporting lines and specialisms. That structure is why demons work so well as antagonists in long-form stories — there is always someone above and someone below, and therefore always politics.

The text is centuries out of copyright and freely available, so the traditional names are free to use. The reason to prefer invented ones is different: the famous names arrive carrying everything every previous author did with them, and an invented name arrives carrying only what you give it.

What makes an invented demon name land

Four features, and the first is the one most generators get wrong by overdoing.

Endings that close hard

The signature endings — the ones English readers have absorbed from the grimoires — stop rather than trail. A name that ends on an open vowel reads as elvish or angelic. This is the single strongest lever, and it is why so many demon names in fiction end the same handful of ways.

Weight in the middle

The consonant clusters sit inside the name rather than at the start. A demon name tends to begin cleanly and thicken as it goes, which is the opposite of the orc pattern, where the first sound does the work.

Three syllables more often than two

Length reads as rank. One-syllable demon names read as minor or as summoned things; three-syllable names read as something with legions. If you want a hierarchy the reader can hear, vary the length rather than the sound.

Restraint with the obvious

The temptation is to pile on every harsh sound at once, and the result reads as a parody. The traditional names are mostly quite elegant. A generated name that sounds like it is trying too hard will stand out as invented beside them.

Rank is more useful than a surname

Demons in the tradition do not have families, and the tool offers titles instead. This is not a substitute for a surname but a better fit.

A rank tells you where the character sits relative to everyone else, which immediately generates story: who they answer to, who resents them, what a promotion would cost. The grimoires are specific about this — dukes, princes, marquises, kings, each with a stated number of legions — and that specificity is what makes the material so usable.

A practical approach: generate the name first, then decide the rank, then decide who holds the rank above. You will have a political situation before you have written a scene.

Titles also solve the pronunciation problem. A reader who stumbles over the name can hold on to the rank, and the rank is what matters for following the plot.

Writing them without the stock version

• Decide what the demon wants. The grimoire demons all have specialisms, and the specific ones are far more interesting than general malevolence. A demon that teaches languages is a character; a demon that wants souls is furniture.
• Use length as hierarchy. Short names for the lesser things, longer for the ones with legions. The reader will pick it up without being told.
• Avoid the apostrophe. It is more tempting here than anywhere, it means nothing, and it has become a marker of amateur worldbuilding.
• Prefer invented names for published work. The traditional ones carry centuries of other people’s use, and some readers hold sincere beliefs about them. An invented name avoids both problems.
• Say them aloud. These names are frequently spoken in-world, often ceremonially. One that is awkward to say will undercut every scene it appears in.

How this generator is built

The infernal tradition supplies its own onsets, vowel nuclei, codas and weighted syllable templates, and names are assembled from those rather than sampled from a list. No traditional demon name is reproduced; the engine models the sound shape, not the vocabulary.

The heavy endings are weighted rather than enforced, so results vary — a system that applied the same ending to every name would be transparent within a dozen results. The usual protections apply: no unsayable consonant runs, no repeated syllables, no badly joined compounds.

The full method is on the how our tools work page.

Other traditions

Each of these is a separate sound system rather than a relabelled version of the same one.

• Elf Name Generator — open and liquid, where these close hard
• Dwarf Name Generator — shorter and blunter, with none of the ceremonial weight
• Orc Name Generator — the same harshness without the dignity these names keep
• Dragon Name Generator — comparable length, trailing rather than stopping
• Roman Name Generator — a real historical system, and the civilisation these names were taken from
• All 20 traditions — including halflings, gnomes, fae, wraiths and merfolk

For the cult, the order or the circle that summons them, the Team Name Generator is a better fit than it sounds, and the Kingdom Name Generator handles infernal territory.

Common questions

Where do traditional demon names come from?

A surprising number are other cultures’ gods, renamed by their rivals. Beelzebub derives from Ba’al Zebub, a Philistine deity whose title appears in the Hebrew Bible. Astaroth traces back to Astarte, a goddess widely worshipped across the ancient Near East. The pattern repeats: as one religion displaced another, the displaced gods were frequently recast as demons, keeping their names.

That is worth knowing if you are inventing demons, because it suggests a structure — a demon name that sounds like it was once a name of honour carries more weight than one built purely to sound unpleasant.

What is the Ars Goetia?

The first section of the Lesser Key of Solomon, a seventeenth-century grimoire, which lists seventy-two demons along with their ranks, their powers and the number of legions each commands. It is the single most influential source for demon names in fiction and games, and most lists you encounter are drawing from it directly or at second hand. It is long out of copyright and freely available.

Why do these names end in -oth, -zar, -ax and -zul?

Because those endings close hard, and the tradition wants names that sound final. The grimoire sources are heavy with Hebrew and Aramaic-derived endings, which English readers have absorbed as the sound of the infernal. A demon name that ends on an open vowel tends to read as elvish or angelic instead — which is a useful lever if you want a demon that does not announce itself.

Do demons have surnames?

Almost never. What they have is rank, and the tradition is explicit about it — the grimoires specify dukes, princes, marquises and kings, each commanding a stated number of legions. Turn titles on in the tool and you get that structure. It is more useful than a surname, because rank implies a hierarchy and a hierarchy implies politics.

Is it safe to use invented demon names?

These are assembled from syllables by a program and mean nothing in any language. If you are writing fiction or running a game, use them freely. Some readers hold sincere beliefs about the traditional names from the grimoires, which is one more reason to prefer invented ones for published work — you avoid both the sensitivity and the risk of unintentionally naming something specific.

Can I use these commercially?

Yes. They are generated rather than copied, and we claim nothing over them. Search anything that becomes a major character.