Welcome to Reedsy's planet name generator
A planet name in science fiction is doing something unusual: it has to make an entirely invented world feel like it has always existed, somewhere out there, regardless of whether your reader has ever seen a photograph of it. The best planet names in the genre (for instance, Arrakis, Solaris, Trantor, Magrathea — we can go on) feel like discoveries rather than inventions. They have the quality of something named by astronomers or explorers rather than authors.
Our planet name generator asks what kind of planet you're writing. Give it your genre, the atmosphere of the world, the era your story is set in, and any cultural or geographic inspiration, and it returns ten planet names with reasoning, calibrated to the specific world and story you're building.
How to use this planet name generator
The atmosphere field is especially powerful for planet names, because a planet's atmosphere — in the literary sense — often defines the entire novel. "Hostile and unforgiving," "ancient and unknowable," "deceptively welcoming" communicate not just what the planet feels like, but what kind of story it's going to generate.
Genre matters here more than on most location generator pages. A Hard Sci-Fi planet name should feel like it could exist in a real astronomical catalogue; a Space Opera planet name can be more mythological; a Literary Science Fiction planet name might be more austere or strange! The genre field shapes the register accordingly.
Setting era is worth using for planet names even though it may seem counterintuitive. A planet discovered and named in a near-future setting will be named differently than one that has been known for millennia in a Far Future civilization — the former might follow contemporary astronomical naming conventions, the latter might have a name that has been translated and corrupted across thousands of years of use.
Cultural or geographic inspiration can work interestingly for planet names. Real-world astronomical naming often draws on mythology — Roman gods, Greek figures, indigenous traditions. Specifying a cultural root gives planet names a linguistic coherence that purely invented phonemes rarely achieve.
Use Additional details for anything specific: the planet's role in your story, its physical characteristics, its position in a star system, its relationship to other named planets, or any naming conventions your fictional civilization uses.
So you want a good planet name?
Planet names in science fiction carry a particular kind of worldbuilding weight because they tend to stand in for entire civilizations, ecosystems, and ways of being human.
A few things worth knowing as you write:
- The planet name generator works best when you know what the planet is for. Is this a world your characters are from, or one they're arriving at? A home world tends to have a name that feels worn and familiar to its inhabitants — possibly mundane, possibly so embedded in daily life that its original meaning has been forgotten.
- Real astronomical naming conventions are a useful resource. Real planets and moons are named according to established conventions: IAU guidelines, mythological traditions, or discoverer's prerogative. Fictional planets that follow plausible naming conventions — or that deliberately subvert them — tend to feel more grounded than ones that don't. The cultural inspiration field lets you anchor planet names in specific mythological traditions the way real astronomy does.
- Consider who named the planet and in what language. In a universe with multiple spacefaring civilizations, a planet might have several names — one from each culture that has encountered it. The name your characters use may be a translation, a corruption, or a deliberate political choice. Specifying this kind of context in additional details can lead to more interesting and specific planet names.
- Planet names that double as common nouns can be powerful. Arrakis means nothing outside Herbert's universe, but Solaris (from the Latin for sun) and Terra (earth) carry their meanings into the fiction. A planet name that is also a word — in any language — creates a layer of meaning that purely invented names can't. The cultural inspiration field is where you specify if you want names that draw on this kind of etymological resonance.
A note on our use of AI
We built this tool for writers, which means we thought carefully about what AI should and shouldn't do here. The generator uses AI to produce planet names that better fit your story's specific context and needs — genre, atmosphere, era, and cultural or mythological inspiration — while explaining its reasoning for each one.
Here's what it won't do for you: it won't build your world, name your planet, or make creative decisions for you. It simply generates options for you.
More importantly, your inputs are not (and will never be) used to train any AI models. Treat whatever comes out as raw material: a starting point that belongs entirely to you. Every result is yours!
