Fantasy Name Generator

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Ettin Name Generator

Create original ettin names with meaning, etymology, and an easy pronunciation guide.

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Old English 'drogian' (to drag, to trail) + 'mar' (a boundary, a mark) adapted — the dragging-boundary-one

He drags his club along the ridge to mark where his hill-country ends, and the line he leaves is said to keep even wolves from crossing.

Best for A hill-ettin who marks the edge of his ground

Old Norse 'krage' (a rugged crag, a bare cliff) + feminine rolling ending — the crag-one

She has raised eleven ettin-children in the dark, and the only light she has seen in forty years is the glow of her own heated club.

Best for A cave-ettin mother of the deep cave

Old English roots 'gor' (muck, filth) + 'gath' (a going, a way) adapted — the muck-going-one, doubled

His two heads agree on nothing but the direction of the next meal, and the hill-path he has worn bare is said to fork every hundred paces where the heads argued over the route.

Best for A young two-headed hill-ettin

Old English 'hearg' (a heathen temple, a high place) + 'thul' (a speaker, an orator) adapted — the high-place-speaker-one, doubled

His two heads preach two different religions from the same ruined altar, and the valley below has gone piously deaf rather than choose between them.

Best for An ancient ettin who claims a hilltop ruin

Middle English 'baul' (a boulder, a rounded hill) + Old English 'gor' (muck) adapted — the boulder-muck-one, doubled

He lives where the hill comes down into the marsh, and the heads argue every sunset over whether to sleep high or dry; the compromise is always that neither does.

Best for A hill-ettin of the boggy ground

Old English 'thrum' (a heavy dull sound, the hum of the earth) + '-ul' (the one of) — the heavy-sound-one

He sleeps seventy years at a stretch, and the shepherds who set their flocks on his hillside are said to lose a ewe to each of his two mouths when he wakes.

Best for A solitary ettin of the long sleep

Old English 'warnian' (to ward off) + feminine rolling ending — the warden-one

She guards a hoard she cannot remember the origin of, and the heads tell travellers two different stories of who first hid it there — neither story flattering to her own kind.

Best for A cave-ettin keeper of the old cave-treasure

Old English 'carn' (a cairn, a heap of stones) + 'grist' (the grinding of mill-stones) adapted — the cairn-grinding-one, doubled

His kind raised the standing stones of the moor, and the heads still argue over which one of them set the capstone on the tallest.

Best for A giant-kin ettin of the old blood

English 'boulder' + Old English 'run' (a whisper, a secret) adapted — the boulder-secret-one

He carries a stone the size of a hay-wagon and speaks to it in two voices; the valley-folk say the stone answers him, but only ever agrees with one head.

Best for A solitary hill-ettin who has driven off his kin

Old English 'thrunian' (to press, to grind) + 'dac' (a dark one) adapted — the grinding-dark-one, doubled

He has not seen the sun in three generations, and the cave-mouth he guards is said to be wider on the inside than the hill can possibly hold.

Best for An old cave-ettin of the deep places

Curated examples

Ettin name ideas

Old English roots 'gor' (muck, filth) + 'gath' (a going, a way) adapted — the muck-going-one, doubled

His two heads agree on nothing but the direction of the next meal, and the hill-path he has worn bare is said to fork every hundred paces where the heads argued over the route.

Best for A young two-headed hill-ettin

Old English 'thrunian' (to press, to grind) + 'dac' (a dark one) adapted — the grinding-dark-one, doubled

He has not seen the sun in three generations, and the cave-mouth he guards is said to be wider on the inside than the hill can possibly hold.

Best for An old cave-ettin of the deep places

English 'boulder' + Old English 'run' (a whisper, a secret) adapted — the boulder-secret-one

He carries a stone the size of a hay-wagon and speaks to it in two voices; the valley-folk say the stone answers him, but only ever agrees with one head.

Best for A solitary hill-ettin who has driven off his kin

Old English 'carn' (a cairn, a heap of stones) + 'grist' (the grinding of mill-stones) adapted — the cairn-grinding-one, doubled

His kind raised the standing stones of the moor, and the heads still argue over which one of them set the capstone on the tallest.

Best for A giant-kin ettin of the old blood

Old English 'drogian' (to drag, to trail) + 'mar' (a boundary, a mark) adapted — the dragging-boundary-one

He drags his club along the ridge to mark where his hill-country ends, and the line he leaves is said to keep even wolves from crossing.

Best for A hill-ettin who marks the edge of his ground

Old English 'hearg' (a heathen temple, a high place) + 'thul' (a speaker, an orator) adapted — the high-place-speaker-one, doubled

His two heads preach two different religions from the same ruined altar, and the valley below has gone piously deaf rather than choose between them.

Best for An ancient ettin who claims a hilltop ruin

Old Norse 'krage' (a rugged crag, a bare cliff) + feminine rolling ending — the crag-one

She has raised eleven ettin-children in the dark, and the only light she has seen in forty years is the glow of her own heated club.

Best for A cave-ettin mother of the deep cave

Old English 'thrum' (a heavy dull sound, the hum of the earth) + '-ul' (the one of) — the heavy-sound-one

He sleeps seventy years at a stretch, and the shepherds who set their flocks on his hillside are said to lose a ewe to each of his two mouths when he wakes.

Best for A solitary ettin of the long sleep

Old English 'grist' (the grinding) + 'warnian' (to refuse, to ward off) adapted — the grinding-warden-one, doubled

He sits across the only pass through the hills, and the heads take turns sleeping so that neither is ever off guard — though they quarrel about whose turn it is for a full day at a time.

Best for A two-headed ettin warden of the pass

Old English 'draca' (a dragon, a great serpent) + 'end' (the one of) adapted — the dragon-kin-one

He wears a mail of dragon-scale he says he took himself, and the two heads tell two wildly different versions of how the dragon died.

Best for A giant-kin ettin who claims dragon-blood

Middle English 'baul' (a boulder, a rounded hill) + Old English 'gor' (muck) adapted — the boulder-muck-one, doubled

He lives where the hill comes down into the marsh, and the heads argue every sunset over whether to sleep high or dry; the compromise is always that neither does.

Best for A hill-ettin of the boggy ground

Old English 'warnian' (to ward off) + feminine rolling ending — the warden-one

She guards a hoard she cannot remember the origin of, and the heads tell travellers two different stories of who first hid it there — neither story flattering to her own kind.

Best for A cave-ettin keeper of the old cave-treasure

Browse by tradition

Ettin name collections

Ettin Names: Hill & Two-Headed

Gor-GathDrogmarHarg-Thuul

Ettin Names: Cave & Giant-Kin

Thrund-DakCarn-GristKragga

Behind the names

About Ettin names

Ettin names should sound like two voices arguing inside one throat — heavy grinding consonants, low open vowels, and a doubled or split structure that echoes the two heads. This generator draws on the English folk etymology of 'ettin' (from Old English 'eoten', the eater, the giant-kin) without copying names from any attested source or any single game's lore. The ettin is treated as the English folk tradition treats him: a two-headed giant of the hill-country and the cave, solitary, slow to wake, fast to anger, and forever arguing with himself. Use the subtypes to move between the two-headed hill-ettin, the deeper cave-ettin, the giant-kin ettin of the old blood, and the solitary ettin who has driven off even his own kind. Every name is original and includes a meaning, a readable pronunciation, and a story-ready role.

Questions answered

Naming Customs

Ettin names favor heavy grinding consonants (g, k, gr, dr, thr, t, d) and low open vowels (a, o, u, aw) with a doubled or hyphenated structure that mirrors the two heads — a name spoken as if by two mouths at once (Gor-Gath, Thrund-Dak). Meanings often reference the hill, the cave, the boulder, the club, the eating, the long sleep, the argument, or the giant-kin blood. Two-syllable names with a hard split feel like a young ettin whose two heads agree on little; four-syllable doubled names feel like an ancient ettin whose two heads have quarrelled for centuries and grown into a single cranky will. Gender marking is loose in the old English tradition (the ettin is more force of hill-country than person), but masculine-coded ettins take the harder split (-g, -k, -th endings) and the rarer feminine-coded ettins of the deep cave take the longer rolling endings (-a, -dra, -ma).

Historical Context

The ettin belongs to the English giant-kin tradition (Old English 'eoten', the eater; cognate with Old Norse 'jötunn', the giant of the wild places). In the oldest folklore the ettin is the heavy solitary giant of the hill-country and the cave — not the courtly giant of later romance, but the older eater-giant who sleeps long under the fell and wakes hungry. The two heads are an English folk embellishment that the tradition uses to explain the ettin's defining trait: he is always arguing with himself, the two heads bickering over every decision from which way to walk to which traveller to eat, and the traveller who survives an ettin encounter usually survives by setting the two heads against each other. The ettin is distinct from the troll (the Norse cave-dweller turned to stone by daylight), the ogre (the smaller man-eater of romance), and the cyclops (the one-eyed forge-giant): the ettin is specifically the two-headed hill-giant of English ground, and his defining features are the two quarrelling heads and the heavy club. In worldbuilding, an ettin's name is rarely spoken by humans — it is bellowed by one head at the other, and learned by travellers only at great risk.

Cultural Lore

In most worldbuilding contexts, an ettin's name is spoken by one head to the other rather than to any outsider, and the two heads often use different halves of the name for themselves. A common traveller's tale holds that an ettin encountered alone will answer to either half of his name but never to the whole, because the whole name belongs to both heads and neither will yield it. Cultures that share ground with ettins associate their names with the grey of the hill-stone, the iron-dark of the cave-mouth, the dull red of the heated club-iron, and the cold brown of the bare hill-earth. Hill variants take names with the grinding split sound of stone dragged over stone; cave variants take names with the deeper echo of the cavern; giant-kin variants take names with the older heavier blood-sound of the giant race; solitary variants take names with the held and bitter sound of an ettin who has driven off even his own kind. A respectful treatment rejects the modern flattening of the ettin as a comic dim giant: he is slow, not stupid, and the two heads between them remember every grudge since the hill was raised.

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