OneTaskBy Tim King · Updated
Codename Generator
Military, Software and Mythological Operation and Project Codenames
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How the Operation / Project Codename Generator works
This codename generator gives a fresh list with every click. Generate operation and project codenames in the conventions militaries, intelligence services, product teams and software vendors use: Operation Iron Lantern as a two-word military name, Project Halcyon as a single mythological word, Red Falcon as a colour and an animal, Tungsten as a mineral, Whistler as a place used for a software release, and Cabbage as a deliberately random dictionary word. Pick a convention, choose a prefix and generate up to a hundred.
Codename generator: how the names are built
A codename exists to talk about a thing before you can say what it is, and the conventions divide by how much the name is allowed to mean. The old rule, from the wartime services, was that a codename must mean nothing: a random word from a dictionary, allocated from a list, so that Cabbage or Padlock gave the enemy no hint, and that convention survives in the random-dictionary option and in the British habit of computer-generated names that are pointedly dull. The American convention drifted the other way into names chosen to sound like their purpose, the two-word adjective-plus-noun form, Iron Lantern, Steadfast Anvil, Northern Harvest, which reads as a press release and is now the shape of most named operations, with a weather or an animal in the second slot for variety; the single word, Overlord in the famous case, Sentinel, Tempest, Falcon, is the older and grander form. Mythological names, Halcyon, Argus, Hyperion, Nemesis, are the intelligence and aerospace convention, where a Greek name lends gravity and is unlikely to give anything away; a colour and an animal, Red Falcon, Silver Heron, Black Lynx, is the convention of exercises, aircraft programmes and thrillers, and it is the shape readers most expect a codename to take. Minerals and metals, Tungsten, Obsidian, Cobalt, Iridium, are the convention of hardware programmes and chip families, hard-sounding words with no meaning attached; software releases take place names, Longhorn, Whistler, Tahoe, mountains, resorts and coastlines in the famous cases, or sweets in alphabetical order in another famous case, because a release needs a name a whole company can say for two years without anyone taking offence. The prefix select adds Operation, Project, Exercise or Codename, or leaves the bare word for a document heading.
The names are ordinary English, mythology, minerals, places and dictionary words, so a result is a new combination rather than a real programme by design; but there have been tens of thousands of named operations and coincidence with a real one, historical or current, is likely and is not a reference to it, and place names used as software codenames are real places, which is the point of the convention. A codename is also not a product name; when the thing ships it gets a name from the Business section, and the codename is what the team remembers.
For the unit that runs the operation, the Military unit name page; for the agency behind the project, the Fictional agency page in the Business section; for the software release it names, the App name and Software product name pages; for the spy who carries it out, the Spy alias page in the People section; and for the war it is fought in, the Fictional war page.
FAQ
How do militaries choose operation names?
Since the wartime services, from allocated lists of meaningless words, and since the 1980s in the American convention from two-word names chosen to convey purpose, a practice that began when the names started appearing in the press. NATO and most allied forces use a mix: exercises get two-word names, sensitive operations get random single words, and a name is never reused while the first is remembered.
Why are software releases named after places?
Because a place name is memorable, unlikely to be trademarked as a product, and unlikely to offend; a big vendor's operating system releases were named for resorts and mountains for a decade, and another company's for sweets in alphabetical order. The convention has spread to hardware and to internal projects generally, and the Software release option follows it.
Should a codename hint at what the project is?
No, if secrecy matters, which is why the old rule was a meaningless word and why the random-dictionary convention exists. If the codename is only for convenience, a hint is harmless and the two-word military form is built to give one. Pick by which of the two you need.
Can a codename become the product name?
Sometimes, and it happens when the team has said it for so long that the marketing name never sticks, but most companies forbid it, because a codename was never checked as a trademark. Treat a codename as internal and pick the product name separately, in the Business section, when the thing ships.
Can I use these names for fiction or test data?
Yes. The names are ordinary English, mythology, minerals, places and dictionary words in the codename conventions, and they belong to no one; coincidence with a real operation or programme is likely and means nothing. For a novel, a thriller, a game, a pitch deck, a release tracker, a real internal project or a test dataset, use them freely.
See also: all Places & Things tools, People, Fantasy & RPG, Sci-fi, Culture & Language, Online & Social, Business & Brand.
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