I studied Germanic languages and literature at Beijing Foreign Studies University. Old Norse sits on the North Germanic branch of that same family — my department also taught Swedish, which is a modern descendant of it, and that is where the northern branch first caught my attention. I have been reading around old European languages ever since, as an enthusiast rather than as an academic. I want to be precise about that distinction: my degree is in the Germanic family, not a doctorate in Old Norse philology, and this site is the work of someone who reads the dictionaries carefully — not of a specialist in the field.
Why I built NameLore
Like a lot of people who spend time in invented worlds — I came to this partly through A Song of Ice and Fire — I got tired of name generators that produce impressive-sounding nonsense. A string like "Vyrloth" has a shape but no content. It cannot be translated, it cannot be justified, and if a reader ever asks what it means, there is no answer. The names in the traditions I was reading were the opposite: overwhelmingly literal, often mundane, and all the more convincing for it. A famous longship was called the Long Serpent. A settlement was the village by the birches.
So NameLore is built the other way round. Instead of generating syllables and hoping they sound Norse, it assembles names from a glossary of Norse word elements, with component meanings and source notes. The English inn and tavern signs use a separate phrase engine. The tool shows the components so you can make an informed creative choice; its combined reading is not a historical translation.
How the lexicon is compiled
The glossary stores simplified name elements, English glosses and source notes, using the reference works below to check disputed entries. Simplified spellings and the rules combining the elements are editorial choices. A dictionary entry supports a component; it does not establish that a complete generated name existed or follows historical grammar. The glossary can contain errors and is corrected when a reported meaning cannot be supported.
The two works the lexicon leans on are both freely readable online, so you never have to take my word for a gloss:
- An Icelandic-English Dictionary
Richard Cleasby & Gudbrand Vigfusson (1874) — The standard historical dictionary of Old Norse; the primary source for root meanings.
- A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic
Geir T. Zoëga (1910) — Used as a cross-check on glosses and on which forms are actually attested.
What I will not do
The generator combines glossary entries rather than retrieving names from a franchise. Unsupported word meanings are removed when found; for example, a mythic name ending should not be assigned an invented independent meaning. English sign-name imagery is labelled as fiction. These checks help explain the tool, but they are not a claim that every entry has received expert linguistic review.
Corrections welcome
If you know this material better than I do and something here is wrong, I would genuinely like to hear it — write to hello@namelore.io. Corrections get made and credited.