Demon name generator

How demon names are structured

A demon name is two or three charged syllables (Mal-, Bel-, Vor-) with a gendered or lordly ending, often followed by a dread title: the Undying, the Flayer, the Thousand-Mawed.

What makes a good demon name

Demonic names are harsh, guttural, and faintly blasphemous, full of z, x, v, and hard stops. A demon's true name is meant to sound dangerous to say aloud — which, in many campaigns, it literally is.

Examples of demon names

Malgoroth, Belith, and Voroz sit squarely in the infernal tradition without copying any specific published fiend.

True names, use-names and the hierarchy of the pit

A demon answers to at least two names. The use-name is the one it gives mortals — pronounceable, menacing, safe to say. The true name is older, harsher and dangerous: in most settings, knowing it grants power over the fiend, which is why true names are written in locked grimoires and never spoken.

Titles mark rank in the infernal hierarchy — the Undying, the Flayer, the Thousand-Mawed are not nicknames but offices. When a generated name above carries a title, that title tells you how senior the thing you have named really is.

Summoning, binding and why the name matters at the table

Naming a demon well pays off in play. A summoned fiend whose name the party has researched should feel different from one they have not — give the researched name a meaning the players can exploit: rot-shadow fiend suggests exactly what to ward against.

Cults name their patrons in euphemism, so the same demon might be the Generous One in the temple and Xargoroth in the grimoire. Keep the true name secret, hand out the euphemism freely, and let the players feel the difference when they finally learn it.

Naming the lesser fiends

Not every fiend rates a three-syllable true-name and a dread title. Infernal courts are hierarchies, and names should scale with rank: servitors and imps get short, clipped versions of their master's pieces, lieutenants get a full name without a title, and only the court's rulers carry both a true-name and an office.

The inventory table below doubles as a family tree for the pit. Give a demon lord a name from it, then build his underlings from the same prefixes with the endings stripped off — the court will sound like one bloodline, because it is.