OneTaskBy Tim King · Updated
Random Letter Generator
Letters, Pairs, Vowels, Consonants and Phonetic Alphabet
OneTask is free, with no sign-up, and built by one person.
If this tool saved you time, a coffee helps keep new ones coming.
How the Random Letter Generator works
This random letter generator is free and makes a new batch each time. Generate random letters: a single letter in upper or lower case, vowels only, consonants only, the common letters that make good game draws, or the Greek alphabet, as a bare letter, a letter with its NATO phonetic word, a pair, a triple, or a letter with a number for a seat, a row or a label. Drawn in the browser, one to a hundred at a time.
Random letter generator: where the names come from
A random letter is the seed for a great many small things, and the alphabet select is what fits it to each: a name-that-starts-with round, a categories game and a spelling drill want the full alphabet but not the letters that have almost no words, which is what the common-letters option removes, Q, X, Z, J, K, V, W and Y; a phonics lesson and a vowel-or-consonant game want the two halves separately; a physics or maths exercise wants a Greek letter; and a seat plan, a car park, a row of lockers or a test fixture wants a letter with a number. The forms follow the uses: a bare upper-case letter is the game draw and the label, lower case is for a phonics card and a variable name, upper and lower together is the alphabet card that shows both forms, the NATO phonetic word is for a radio or a call-centre drill and for reading a letter aloud without ambiguity, a pair and a triple are for initials, a code, a licence plate fragment and a "make a word from these" round, and a letter with a number, with or without a dash, is a seat, a row, a shelf, a grid reference and a hospital bed. The draw is uniform across the chosen alphabet, so in the full alphabet each letter comes up one time in twenty-six, which is not how letters are distributed in English; for a draw weighted like a Scrabble bag, where E is common and Q is rare, use the common-letters option, which is a fair approximation for most games.
The letters are the twenty-six of the basic Latin alphabet and the twenty-four of the Greek, with the NATO spelling alphabet in the international spellings, Alfa and Juliett, that the ICAO uses; the number in a letter-plus-number form runs from one to thirty because that is the range of seat rows, lockers and grid squares, and it is random and means nothing. The page keeps no history and repeats are possible on a small alphabet, which is what a real bag would do too, though it will not repeat within one batch until the alphabet is used up.
For a random word once the letter is chosen, the Random word page; for a random object, animal, job or hobby starting from that letter, generate a batch on those pages and pick; for a random number by itself, the Random number generator in the Calculators section; for a dice roll or a coin flip, the Dice roller and Coin flip pages; and for a whole codename from a letter and a word, the Codename page.
FAQ
Is the draw fair?
Yes, uniform across whichever alphabet is selected, using the browser's cryptographic random source. In the full alphabet every letter has the same one-in-twenty-six chance; there is no weighting by how common a letter is in English, so use the common-letters option if Q and X are spoiling a game.
What is the common-letters option?
The eighteen letters that begin plenty of English words: the alphabet minus J, K, Q, V, W, X, Y and Z. It is for categories games, name-that-starts-with rounds and spelling drills where the rare letters produce a round nobody can play, and it is a fair approximation of a Scrabble-style weighted draw without the tiles.
Why Alfa and Juliett rather than Alpha and Juliet?
Because those are the official ICAO spellings of the NATO phonetic alphabet, chosen so that speakers of French and other languages pronounce them correctly: Alfa so the f is not read as a p, Juliett so the final t is not silent. The Greek option uses the ordinary English names of the Greek letters instead.
Can I exclude letters I have already drawn?
Within one batch, yes: the generator does not repeat a letter until the alphabet is used up, so a batch of twenty-six in the full alphabet is a shuffled alphabet, and a batch of five vowels is all five in random order. Between batches there is no memory, and a new batch can start with the letter the last one ended on.
Can I use these letters for fiction or test data?
Yes. A letter belongs to no one. For a word game, a classroom drill, a seat plan, a label, a placeholder, a licence-plate fragment in a story, a grid reference in a game, or a fixture in a test, use them freely.
See also: all Places & Things tools, People, Fantasy & RPG, Sci-fi, Culture & Language, Online & Social, Business & Brand.
Related tools
Aircraft / Plane Name Generator
Aircraft names like Lucky Lady, Spirit of Northgate, Silver Arrow and Old Reliable.
Airship Name Generator
Zeppelins and sky ships, captains, routes and fates.
Album Name Generator
Album names like Hollow Cathedral, Songs for the Long Drive and Static Bloom.
Art / Painting Title Generator
Art titles like Untitled (Blue Kitchen), Study for a Harbour and Composition No. 7.
Asylum Name Generator
Abandoned asylums and sanatoriums, wings, histories and rumours.