OneTaskBy Tim King · Updated
Fantasy Language Generator
Invented Words With Meanings in Five Sound Palettes for a Consistent Conlang
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How the Fantasy Language / Word Generator works
This fantasy language generator is free and makes a new batch each time. Generate words for an invented fantasy language, each with a meaning, in five sound palettes: the flowing vowel-heavy tongue of elves and fair folk, the harsh consonantal speech of the mountain, the guttural language of orcs and ogres, the sibilant hiss of serpent-folk, and the Latin-flavoured liturgical language of priests and old empires. Use the results as vocabulary, place-name roots and the odd word your characters drop into dialogue.
Fantasy language generator: where the names come from
Nobody needs a whole conlang. What a novel or a campaign needs is thirty words in a consistent sound, so that when a character swears, names a sword or greets a stranger, the reader hears a language behind it. This generator produces those thirty words. Each result is a word built from a syllable table for the chosen palette and a gloss drawn from the things fantasy vocabulary tends to be about: oaths, hearths, roads, tides, grief, iron and the dead. Pair the word with the gloss or swap glosses between words; the sound is the part that matters.
Flowing builds from liquid consonants and open vowels, with an accented ë or a long -iel ending, and is what most readers hear as elvish. Harsh uses closed syllables with kh, dr, th and gr and the -um and -dûm endings of dwarvish and mountain speech. Guttural leans on ug, ok, gh and ak for orcish, goblin and ogre languages. Sibilant is built almost entirely from s, sh, z and th for serpent-folk, lizard-folk and anything that hisses. Liturgical uses Latin-shaped syllables with -us, -um and -orum endings for the language of priests, scholars, old empires and spell incantations, which is also the palette to use for a dead language carved on ruins.
The two-word patterns give compound phrases with a longer gloss, the kind of thing that ends up as a place name, a ship name or a motto. A word like elenvar glossed as starlight can name a sword, a daughter or a city, and the gloss tells you what the name means to the people who use it, which is the detail that makes an invented name feel inhabited rather than typed.
The syllable tables are original and generic within each register; they follow the sound of the tradition without copying any published language's vocabulary or grammar. For names built from these palettes, the race pages in this section use matching sounds; for a book written in the language, the book page; for a spell spoken in it, the spell page; and for the motto of a house, the noble house page.
FAQ
Can I build a real grammar from these words?
Not from this page alone, but the words give you the phonology, which is the hard part. Pick one palette, generate fifty words, and you have a consistent sound to build on. A few rules of your own (plural in -i, past tense with a prefix) will carry a language further than most readers will ever test.
Why do the glosses look like poetry?
Because the words a fantasy language is quoted for are never "table" or "Tuesday". They are the words for oaths, homelands and grief, the concepts the author wants to show the culture cares about. The gloss list is written for that use; a more mundane vocabulary is easy to add by hand.
How do I keep the language consistent across a book?
Generate a batch in one palette and keep a list. Reuse syllables: if el- means star in one word, let it mean star elsewhere, and readers will start to hear it. Consistency comes from repetition, not from a large vocabulary.
Is the liturgical palette actually Latin?
No. It is shaped like Latin, with the same syllable structure and endings, because that is what readers recognise as the language of priests and old empires, but the words are invented and mean nothing in Latin. Do not use them where a real Latin speaker in the story would be expected to understand them.
Are these words from any published fantasy language?
No. The syllables are original and the glosses are invented pairings. The sound registers (flowing for elves, harsh for dwarves) are a genre convention rather than any one author's property, and the results will not collide with a published vocabulary.
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