Random Last Name Generator

Choose a country, enter how many names you want (1 to 15), and press Generate Last Name. The Random Last Name Generator returns a list of surnames typical of that country, each on its own card with a copy button. The default is United States, which gives you names like Kreiger, Schultz or Daugherty; switch to Japan and you get 山本 or 高橋, Russia gives Воронцов, India gives Kapoor, Turkey gives Erbay. It's the tool to reach for when a character, test account or pen name needs a plausible family name and you don't want to keep typing "Smith".

The 36 country options

The dropdown lists, in alphabetical order: Arabic, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Croatia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Nepal, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States and Vietnam. Each option maps to a locale in the name-faking library the site uses, and the surname is drawn from that locale's list.

Names come back in the script the country actually uses. Russia and Ukraine return Cyrillic, Japan returns kanji, China and Taiwan return Chinese characters, Israel returns Hebrew, Georgia returns Georgian script, Nepal returns Devanagari, and Arabic returns Arabic script. If you need a romanized version for a form, you'll have to transliterate it yourself.

One limitation worth knowing: a few English-speaking locales (United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, Canada, South Africa) and the Switzerland option share the library's general English surname pool rather than a country-specific one, so "United Kingdom" can return Zemlak just as easily as Thompson. The continental European, Asian and Latin American options are more distinct.

What you get

Surnames only. There is no first name, no gender option and no meaning or origin shown. If you want a full name, the Random Boy Name Generator pairs first and last names, and the Unisex Name Generator handles first names that work for any character. The copy icon on each card puts the name on your clipboard, which is handy when you're filling fifteen rows of a test spreadsheet.

Where random surnames come in useful

• Fiction with a real setting. A story set in Lisbon reads better when the neighbors are called Lima and Carvalho rather than names borrowed from an American phone book. Pick Portugal and generate ten.
• Game NPCs and tabletop campaigns. Generate a batch per town so each region of your world has a consistent naming flavor. Norway for the northern fishing village, Georgia for the mountain kingdom.
• Test data. Fifteen Japanese or Vietnamese surnames in the real script are a quick way to check that a database, PDF export or email template handles non-Latin characters correctly.
• Pen names and usernames. Combine a surname from here with a first name you like. For something sillier, the Goofy Ahh Names Generator and Stupid Name Generator exist.
• Genealogy and language practice. Seeing a run of Polish or Finnish surnames side by side makes their common endings (-ski, -wicz; -nen, -la) easy to spot.

Sample output by country

How surnames differ by country

The generator reflects some real naming conventions, and knowing them helps you judge whether a result fits your character. German and Austrian surnames are often occupational (Schmidt, Müller, Weber) or descriptive; the German Name Generator and Austrian Name Generator go deeper on those. Slavic surnames carry gendered endings: a Russian man is Воронцов, his sister Воронцова, and this tool returns the masculine form. Spanish and Mexican names traditionally use two surnames (father's then mother's), but the tool gives one at a time, so generate two and combine them. Japanese, Chinese and Vietnamese family names come first in normal usage, and Chinese and Vietnamese ones are usually a single character or syllable, which is why the Taiwan sample above is one character long. Icelandic-style patronymics aren't represented, since Iceland isn't in the list.

For every other kind of name, from couples to rave aliases, see all name generators.