Guild Name Generator

Two guilds from each theme

Generated by this tool when the page was built, with their tags in brackets.

• Heroic Sunguard [SUN] · Sisterhood of the Flame [SF] Motto: “Shield the weak”. Knightly orders and adventuring companies: light, oaths and protection.
• Dark Grimreach [GRI] · Brotherhood of the Crimson Moon [BCM] Motto: “The night keeps its own”. Cults, assassins and thieves: shadow, ash and secrets.
• Arcane The Seventh Stargazers [SS] · Seraphine's Magi [SM] Motto: “Light is a language”. Mages and scholars: stars, sigils and hidden knowledge.
• Mercenary The Broken Wolves [BW] · Band of the Knot [BK] Motto: “Last to break”. Sell-swords and free companies: steel, coin and reputation.
• Trade guild The Glassblowers' Guild of Harrowgate [GGH] · The Vintners' Hall [VH] Motto: “Fair weight, fair price”. Craft and trade guilds in the historical style, from bakers to bellfounders.
• Funny The Respawn Point [RP] · Fashion Over Function [FOF] Motto: “Fashion is endgame”. Player guilds that do not take themselves seriously.

A guild is three things, not one

In most online games a guild's name is only half of its identity. The other half is the tag: the two to four letters shown beside every member's name, in chat, over their heads and on the leaderboards. A great name with a clumsy tag gets shortened by everyone into something you did not choose. And a guild that lasts usually ends up with a motto, a line people quote back at each other after a good run or a bad wipe.

So every result here comes with all three. The tag is built the way players build them by hand — the initials of the words that matter — and the motto is chosen to match the theme.

Six kinds of guild

Heroic

Knightly orders and adventuring companies: the Order of the Silver Flame, the Sunlit Lions. The vocabulary is light, oaths and protection, and the mottos are promises — "Hold the line", "None left behind". Right for a guild that runs dungeons together, helps new players and wants to sound like the good guys.

Dark

Cults, thieves and assassins: the Syndicate of the Withered Mask, the Ashen Knives. Shadow, ash and secrets, with mottos that sound like warnings — "Every debt is paid", "We were never here". Player-versus-player guilds tend to live here.

Arcane

Mage colleges and scholarly orders: the Tower of the Silver Orrery, the Starbound Weavers. An orrery is a mechanical model of the solar system, the kind of word that makes a guild sound as though it owns a library. Mottos are about knowledge and patience.

Mercenary

Free companies and sell-swords: the Free Company of the Bloodied Hammer, the Lucky Hounds. A "free company" was a real thing — bands of soldiers in medieval Europe who fought for whoever paid, between wars and sometimes instead of them. Mottos are about contracts and coin.

Trade guild

The original meaning of the word, explained below: the Ancient Guild of Clockmakers, the Tallow Chandlers' Hall. For worldbuilding a city, naming a crafting guild in a game, or a group of friends who really do just want to make things.

Funny

Player guilds that do not take themselves seriously: Loot Goblins, Respawn Anonymous, Tank You Very Much. Every game has them, and they are often the friendliest guilds on the server. The mottos are mostly excuses.

Pick several themes and the results are mixed, each card labelled with the theme it came from.

How the tag is made, and checked

The generator takes the initials of the words that carry meaning and skips the ones that do not — "of", "the", "and". The Order of the Silver Flame becomes OSF; the Sunlit Lions becomes SL. A single-word name like Lionshield uses its first three letters, LIO, since one letter is not a tag.

Then the tag is checked. Initials have a way of spelling things nobody intended, and a guild tag is displayed above your character's head to every player you meet. A list of combinations that would be embarrassing, rude or worse is rejected outright, and the generator draws again. It also avoids giving two guilds on the same screen the same tag, so you can tell them apart when comparing.

Most games limit tags to somewhere between two and five characters, so every tag here is four or fewer.

The shapes guild names take

• Order of the… — a body and what it is devoted to: Covenant of the Ashen Crown. The most traditional shape, and the one that sounds most like a real institution.
• The Adjective Nouns — The Crimson Wardens. Short, plural, easy to chant. Works in every theme.
• Named for a founder — Elena's Watchers. Suits a guild built around one person, and gives the leader a reason to stay.
• One word — Stormguard, Ashveil. Compact and tag-friendly. Built with the same seam repair the town generator uses, so you never see "Ashshroud".

When guilds were about bread, not dragons

For most of history a guild was an association of people in the same trade — bakers, masons, weavers, goldsmiths — that controlled who could practise the craft, how apprentices were trained and what counted as good work. Guilds set prices, settled disputes, looked after the widows of their members, and in many towns had a hall of their own and a great deal of political power.

Some still exist. The City of London has more than a hundred livery companies, most of them descended from medieval guilds and several still styled "The Worshipful Company of" their trade. Many no longer have much to do with the craft itself, though a few still do.

The trade theme follows that pattern of a trade plus a formal style. It deliberately avoids the exact "Worshipful Company" styling, because some of these trades have real companies by that name. The trades themselves are a mix of familiar and wonderfully specific: bellfounders, cordwainers (shoemakers), fletchers (arrow-makers), tallow chandlers (candle-makers), scriveners (scribes). For a fantasy city, a few of these on a street map make it feel lived in.

Choosing well

A guild name has to survive a few things a one-off character name does not:

• Voice chat. It will be said aloud constantly. If it needs spelling out, it will be shortened to something you did not choose.
• Recruitment posts. A name that says what kind of guild you are — casual, competitive, role-play — does half the work of recruiting for you.
• Character limits. Many games cap guild names at somewhere around twenty to thirty characters. The longest Order-of names can run over, so check yours before you are set on it.
• Time. A joke guild name is funny for a season. If you hope the guild lasts years, pick something you will still be happy to see on a leaderboard.

Save the names you like with the Save button and they collect in a shortlist at the top of the results, kept in this browser. Share the shortlist with the guild before you commit: the name everyone shrugs at is often better than the one only the leader loves.

Naming the ranks inside a guild

Once a guild has a name, it needs ranks — the titles shown next to members in the roster, and the permissions that go with them. Generic ranks (Member, Officer, Leader) work, but themed ones make a guild feel like a place rather than a spreadsheet. A few ladders that fit the themes above, from newest member to leader:

• Heroic: Squire, Knight, Knight-Captain, Marshal, Lord Commander.
• Dark: Initiate, Shadow, Blade, Whisper, the Hand.
• Arcane: Apprentice, Adept, Magister, Archmage, Keeper of the Tower.
• Mercenary: Recruit, Sword, Sergeant, Captain, Paymaster.
• Trade: Apprentice, Journeyman, Master, Warden, Master of the Hall — the real progression medieval guilds used.
• Funny: Snack Runner, Floor Inspector, Designated Healer, Raid Apologist, Supreme Loot Goblin.

Keep the bottom rank friendly — it is the first thing a new member sees — and make sure officers can tell at a glance who can invite, kick and edit. A clever title nobody understands causes more confusion than a plain one.

From a name to a recruitment post

The name, tag and motto together are most of a recruitment post. Lead with the name and tag, say in one line what the guild actually does — raiding twice a week, relaxed questing, role-play on weekends — and close with the motto. A guild called the Covenant of the Ashen Crown that turns out to be a casual Sunday group will confuse people; one called Loot Goblins that raids seriously will too. The best names set expectations the guild then meets.

Guilds outside games

The word has had a second life in workplaces. Some technology companies organise people with the same skill across different teams into "guilds" — a guild for everyone who works on testing, or on design — borrowing the medieval idea of a community of practice. Book clubs, maker spaces and hobby groups use the word for the same reason. The trade theme suits these well: the Fellowship of Scriveners makes a good name for a writing group.

Related tools

Give the guild's members names with the Fantasy Name Generator, arm them with the Weapon Name Generator, and give the guild somewhere to drink with the Tavern Name Generator. For a whole kingdom to fight over, there is the Kingdom Name Generator.

Common questions

What makes a good guild name?

It should say what kind of group you are — knights, thieves, scholars, sell-swords or a bunch of friends who mostly fall off things — and still be short enough to shout in voice chat. It also needs a tag that reads well, which is why every result here comes with one.

What is a guild tag?

A short abbreviation many games display next to a member’s name, usually two to four letters. The generator builds it from the guild name’s important initials, skipping words like “of” and “the”, and rejects any that spell something you would not want above your head.

Can I name the guild after our leader?

Yes. Type a name into Founder or leader and some results will be possessive names like Elena’s Watchers. If you leave it blank, the generator invents a founder.

What is a trade guild?

Before guilds were adventuring companies, they were associations of craftsmen — masons, bakers, coopers — that controlled training and standards for their trade. Choose Trade guild to get names in that historical style, useful for worldbuilding a fantasy city or naming a crafting guild in a game.

Do the names work for D&D and tabletop games?

Yes. Each result gives you a name, a tag and a motto, which is a good start for a faction in a campaign. Heroic, Dark, Arcane and Mercenary map neatly onto knightly orders, thieves’ guilds, wizard colleges and free companies.

Is anything I type saved?

No. Everything is generated in your browser. The shortlist is kept in this browser only.