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Japanese dragon name generator
This name generator will give you 10 random modern or old Japanese dragon names depending on your choice.
Japanese dragons are legendary folklore creatures who come in a wide range of forms, though they are heavily inspired by Chinese dragons in most cases. They also take inspiration from Indian and Korean folklore, as is reflected in the Japanese words for dragon (ryō from Chinese and nāga from Indian). They're most commonly depicted as flying, snake-like beings, they're sometimes also depicted as having wings and overall more bird-like with the exception of their head, which is usually depicted the same way Chinese dragons are.
Japanese dragons are often associated with rain, water and bodies of water and are usually benevolent.
Japanese dragon names vary a great bit. First and foremost because many of the myths originated from a time when the Japanese language was quite different from what it is today. Names like Watatsumi and Yamata no Orochi are from Old Japanese writing (though the tsu in Watatsumi would've been tu instead). Besides a difference in words (Wata being an Old Japanese word for water, compared to the modern Mizu), the phonetics were different as well. If you'd like to hear it, videos on Youtube like this one will show you both how different it sounded and how different words for even things like numbers were.
In this name generator I focused on both old and modern Japanese names, but divided them so you can pick which ones you'd like. Keep in mind that the accuracy may not always be 100%. Sometimes the way you pronounce a written kanji (one of the Japanese alphabets) can change depending on the ones that come before it. An example of this is god. On its own it'd be Kami, but when combined with dragon (ryū), you don't get ryūkami, but ryūjin. This has to do with whether you use the Chinese or Japanese based pronunciation, but it'd take me a lot more research to get everything right. If you happen to read this and are able to help with this, shoot me a message.
A final note, the Old Japanese names are written with the Modified Mathias-Miller system, rather than the Frellesvig & Whitman system used on the The Oxford-Ninjal Corpus Of Old Japanese website I used for my Old Japanese word research.
To start, simply click on the button to generate 10 random names. Don't like the names? Simply click again to get 10 new random names.
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