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Generator Hut

Planet Name Generator

Three conventions: catalogue designations, classical, and alien.

Generator settings

Between 1 and 100.

Appends a survey suffix like Prime or IV.

No name repeats within a batch.

Generated names

Your names will appear here. Press Generate names to start.

Generate planet names in the three conventions science fiction actually uses: catalogue designations like Kepler-4471c, classical names drawn from Greek and Roman myth, and invented alien words. Which one you want depends entirely on the story — hard science fiction runs on catalogue numbers, space opera on classical names, and first-contact fiction on words that sound like nobody human coined them.

Why use this tool?

Real catalogue format

Survey prefix, number and orbital letter — Kepler-4471c, Gliese-892d. The format working astronomers actually use.

Classical names

Erebus, Hyperion, Vesper, Thanatos — the register space opera has drawn on since the 1930s.

Invented alien worlds

A separate sound palette with no human naming pattern behind it, for worlds nobody from Earth named.

Free for any use

Assembled from generic components with no licence attached. Use them in fiction, games or campaign settings.

How this planet name generator works

The catalogue variant is the one most generators skip, because it needs a number rather than a word. Real exoplanets are named after the survey that found them plus a running number plus a letter for the orbital position — the star is a, the first planet found is b, and so on. That is why there is no Kepler-442a: the a is the star itself. The generator draws the number rather than picking from a list, so the designations do not repeat.

Classical names come from a curated pool of Greek and Roman mythological figures, which is the convention space opera has used since the pulp era. It works because the names already carry association — a planet called Thanatos does not need explaining.

Alien names are syllable-assembled from a pool with no human naming pattern behind it: hard consonant clusters, and endings that do not resolve the way English or Latin ones do. Keeping that pool separate from the classical one is what stops the output collapsing into a single indistinct register.

How to use it

  1. Step 1: Choose a convention

    Catalogue designation, classical, or alien — or Any to mix all three.

  2. Step 2: Add a designation

    Optionally append Prime, IV or Colony for a system with more than one settled world.

  3. Step 3: Generate

    Press Generate, then copy the names that suit your setting.

Example usage

Hard science fiction
Catalogue designations only, because a near-future story would use the name the survey gave it, not a poetic one.
Space opera
Classical names with designations on, giving worlds like Solaria Prime and Erebus IV.
First contact
Alien names for the worlds humans did not name, contrasted against catalogue numbers for the ones they did.

Frequently asked questions

Why do real exoplanets start at b, not a?

Because a is the star. The convention labels the host star a and then assigns b, c, d and so on to planets in order of discovery — not order of distance, which is why a system's letters often look out of sequence.

What do the catalogue prefixes mean?

They name the survey or catalogue that found the object. Kepler and TOI come from space telescopes, Gliese and HD from star catalogues, and Wolf and Ross from the astronomers who compiled them.

Are any of these real planets?

The numbers are randomly drawn, so a designation could coincide with a real one. The prefixes are genuine catalogues. If you need a name that definitely refers to nothing real, use the classical or alien sets.

Which convention should I use?

Match it to how your characters would talk. A survey scientist says Kepler-4471c. A colonist who has lived there for thirty years says whatever the colony calls it. Using both, for the same planet, is a cheap and effective way to show that gap.

Can I use these commercially?

Yes. Assembled names carry no licence, and mythological names are long out of copyright.

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Browse every tool in Fantasy Name Generators.