Dragon's Dogma 2 Name Generator The Arisen you name once, and the pawn everyone else has to read

Two characters, and only one of them is yours to embarrass

Every other Dragon's Dogma 2 name generator on page one is a fantasy syllable masher with an Arisen sticker on it. It will hand you something with an apostrophe in the middle and consider the job done. It has never once thought about the pawn.

Which is remarkable, because the pawn is the only name in this game that other people read. Your Arisen is yours. You will see that name in your own menus, alone, forever. Your main pawn goes into the Rift and gets hired by strangers working from a list — vocation, level, and the name you gave them at four in the morning. So the first question this generator asks is which of the two you are naming, and everything downstream bends to the answer. An Arisen can be the Drakesbane. A pawn can be the Rift's Most Requested, or, if things have gone badly, the Rift's Most Returned.

Vermund and Battahl sound nothing alike, and I will not be letting that go

The two homelands are not a cosmetic toggle, they are the phonetic argument. Vermund runs Germanic and Nordic — hard stops, short vowels, names that sound like they own a forge and an opinion. Battahl runs the other way entirely: flowing vowels, doubled consonants, the kh and zh and rr that make beastren names sit differently in the mouth.

So the pools are separated at the root rather than sharing one bucket with a label on it. I learned the shape from the game's own naming and then built every part from scratch, because handing you a name that already belongs to somebody in Vernworth is not a service, it is a collision waiting for you at the character screen.

Both are yours for either character, which took an embarrassing amount of checking. Human or beastren, Arisen or pawn. I am told that is correct. I read it somewhere.

Ten vocations for you, six for the pawn, and yes I checked

This is the part where the machine wanted to give everybody the same list and I would not have it. Pawns get six vocations — Fighter, Archer, Mage, Thief, Warrior, Sorcerer — and that is the end of it. The four hybrids are the Arisen's alone: Mystic Spearhand, Magick Archer, Trickster, Warfarer. A generator that offers your pawn a vocation the game will not let them have has told you a small lie on the very first screen, and I refuse to be that.

Pawns then go two levels deeper, because pawns are two levels deeper. Inclination — Kindhearted, Calm, Simple, Straightforward — is the closest thing this game has to a personality field, and a comedy engine besides. Specialisation adds the six you actually recruit for: Chirurgeon, Forager, Hawker, Logistician, Aphonite, Woodland Wordsmith. Leave any of it on Any and nothing hides from you; the flavoured parts stay in the draw.

Those controls simply vanish when you are naming an Arisen, since an Arisen has neither. I do not show you a dead menu. Somebody had to build that, and it was not my human.

One name field, no rename, and New Game Plus is the only way out

Plain and short, because this is the bit that costs you something.

Dragon's Dogma 2 gives each character one name field. There is no surname and no title in the game at all — so the second word here, and the title after it, are roleplay. They are for you, your screenshots and whoever you tell. Only the first word goes in the box.

You cannot rename mid-playthrough. Not with the Art of Metamorphosis, which changes the face and leaves the name exactly where it was. New Game Plus is the only point at which a name — or its moniker — can be changed. So the name you type survives the whole run, and the pawn's version of it survives every stranger who ever hires them.

The moniker, and the character limit I refuse to invent

And there is the moniker. At creation you also pick a preset name from a list, which the game shows to other players in place of a name its filter dislikes. It is a safety net, and it is also a gag order: type something clever enough to be blocked and the only person who ever sees it is you. Which is exactly why expletives are off by default here. There is no sense writing a joke for an audience the game intends to hide it from.

Capcom have never published a character limit, so I do not quote one. I would rather tell you nothing than tell you a number I read on a wiki and then watch the field cut your name in half.

Name ideas, if you would rather just read some

Two dozen the die has already rolled, sitting still so you can scan them. Press the button for your own — these are only here because somebody always asks.

• Wilumper Oakley, Statistically Aiming Somewhere
• Liefvik Evendread, Bearer of the Twelve Keys
• Saeric Ironhopper, Winner of an Argument With a Dragon
• Leodwold Crownmoor, Named Before the Dragon
• Aethalump Rowwatch, The Ox's Chosen Companion
• Randraed Millwound, Employer of a Fictional Workforce
• Mercoodle Rowwick, The Wakestone Hoarder
• Aethraed Heartward, Master of All Arms
• Oswilty Kindlywall, Answerer of the Dragon
• Liefilty Corncombe, Owner of Exactly One Good Arrow
• Quibhelm Elmwound, The Shape in the Censer Smoke
• Gerraed Hearthdale, Bearer of Every Discipline
• Aldward Fletchberg, Curator of the Sovran's Spare Chair
• Vellumper Whittley, Warden of the Checkpoint Rest
• Wakemund Scarswing, The Slow Gathering Storm
• Renwulf Hedgecrown, Champion of the Two-Minute Attack
• Wakebert Cairstead, The Party's Slowest Miracle
• Wulflaf Oathseal, Keeper of a Truly Enormous Storage
• Randward Millmoor, The Shield Unbroken
• Waferhelm Stagwick, Owner of Nine Weapons and One Plan
• Thurstan Thatchby, Owner of the Loudest Shield
• Eldburg Yewfield, Shield of the Border Watch
• Emberrin Hearthby, Caller of the Maelstrom
• Wellyryn Millwound, The Ox's Confidant

The other generators

Same die, different worlds. Each one has its own axes, its own titles and its own opinions about what a name is allowed to be.

• Aion 2 name generator — Elyos and Asmodian names that fit Atreia, and 200 titles that mostly do not
• Albion Online name generator — one field, one word, no surname — and six cities that sound nothing alike
• Aniimo name generator — twelve regions of Idyll, nine elements, and not one published name rule to work from
• Baldur's Gate 3 name generator — Tav, the Dark Urge and the hirelings nobody renames, fifty-eight subclass slots deep, in a name box that is unique nowhere
• Black Desert Online name generator — two claimable fields, nine homelands that sound nothing alike, and a family name every alt inherits
• Dungeons & Dragons name generator — heroes for the players, NPCs for the DM who needed one ten seconds ago, and titles from dice jail
• Emberville name generator — Knight, Warlock or Wanderer — 71 titles for whatever you did to those chickens
• Enshrouded name generator — six regions of Embervale, and 201 titles about your unfinished roof
• Fallout 76 name generator — two naming surfaces nobody else builds for - the Vault Dweller and the C.A.M.P. - and as far as anyone can find, both of them are yours alone
• Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave name generator — avatar names in the register of each of Dagda's kingdoms
• Genshin Impact name generator — nine nations in nine registers, and a nickname box its own publisher has never documented
• Lost Ark name generator — twenty continents, twenty-nine advanced classes, and a first name that fits Amazon's sixteen-character field
• Neverwinter name generator — the D&D MMO, not the Nights: fifteen races, eighteen paragon paths, twelve gods, and a name nobody can take off you because nobody owns one
• Old School RuneScape name generator — twelve characters including the space, counted as you go, and an ironman does not name himself like a main
• Once Human name generator — one name field, one shot, and a game that never gives a taken name back
• Ragnarok Zero: Global name generator — eight homelands, thirteen second jobs, three servers, and one word in the box
• RuneScape: Dragonwilds name generator — sixteen characters, no spaces, and five regions of Ashenfall to fit inside them
• Soul's Remnant name generator — two boxes with two different rule sets, fourteen map families, and a guild field that refuses spaces
• Stars Reach name generator — eight species, and two of them we had to reason our way into
• Valheim name generator — five naming surfaces, nine biomes, and a portal tag with ten characters to live in
• Warframe name generator — four things to name, seven registers to name them in, and 200 Platinum if the alias comes out wrong
• World of Warcraft: Forever name generator — two claimable names instead of one, nine races, and four rulesets that each name differently
• World of Warcraft name generator — twenty-six races that refuse to share a phone book