Dwarf Naming Conventions: Clans, Endings and the Sound of Stone
How dwarven names work across fantasy: the hard consonant inventory, the rule that keeps clusters sayable, gendered endings with meanings, and the two clan-name traditions, with a table of endings.
Elvish names flow; dwarvish names land. That is the whole aesthetic, and it comes from a small set of sound rules that every fantasy setting since the 1930s has borrowed from Old Norse. Learn the rules and you can build a dwarf name for any setting without copying one.
The consonants: stops and clusters
Where elvish is built from liquids and sibilants, dwarvish is built from stops. Th, d, b, g, k and t start syllables, and, unlike elvish, so do clusters: br, gr, dr, thr, kr. At the end of a syllable the language is happy with heavy codas: r, n, m, k, d, and the clusters rn, rk, nd, rg. Thorbrak. Gruldin. Brundhild.
The effect is that dwarvish names have edges. An elvish name can be said without the tongue touching the teeth; a dwarvish name cannot.
The one rule that stops it becoming a growl
Piling consonants up is easy; the trick is knowing which piles are pronounceable. The genre’s dwarvish follows a rule from real Germanic languages: three consonant sounds may meet across a syllable seam only if the first is a sonorant (r, l, n or m). Thor-brak works because r is a sonorant. Thod-grak does not; the tongue has nowhere to go between d and g. Kaul-mund works; Kaud-mund is a stumble.
Digraphs count as one sound. Th is one sound, so Thr- is a two-consonant cluster and fine at the start of a name. A generator that respects this rule produces Thorbrak and never Thodgrak; one that just concatenates letters produces both.
The vowels: low and back
Dwarvish vowels sit at the back of the mouth: a, o, u. The front vowels i and e appear but are rare, and diphthongs rarer still (au and ai for flavour, never two in one name). This is the second half of why dwarf and elf names cannot be confused: elvish lives in a, e, i and the diphthongs; dwarvish lives in a, o, u.
Given names: one or two syllables plus an ending
Dwarven given names in the genre are almost all two syllables: a hard core and a gendered ending. Three-syllable names exist and are reserved for kings, ancestors and formal occasions. One-syllable names are nicknames.
The ending does the work of gender and meaning, as in elvish, but the meanings are dwarven: iron, battle, stone, the hearth.
| Ending | Reads as | Gloss |
|---|---|---|
| -in | masculine | iron-born |
| -rik | masculine | ruler |
| -gar | masculine | spear |
| -dur | masculine | enduring |
| -mund | masculine | guardian |
| -grim | masculine | stern |
| -a | feminine | hearth-daughter |
| -hild | feminine | battle |
| -dis | feminine | lady |
| -run | feminine | secret |
| -wyn | feminine | joy |
| -i | either | of the deep |
| -ur | either | of the mountain |
Thorgar is spear; Thorhild is battle; Thori is of the deep. Same core, three dwarves.
Clan names: two traditions
Dwarves are defined by clan more than by given name, and the genre has two ways of naming one.
Forged compounds are English: a material plus an object. Ironfist and Stonehammer are the famous ones, and their fame is the problem; a table where every dwarf is a Stone-something feels borrowed. The fix is a wider palette on both sides. Materials: iron, stone, gold, silver, copper, granite, flint, ember, bronze, coal, frost, ore, ash, steel, slate, thunder, oak, adamant, rune. Objects: hammer, beard, fist, anvil, helm, shield, axe, brow, forge, delver, breaker, hold, gate, foot, song, hewer, mantle, vein, brand, ward. Emberbrow, Slatehold and Runeward come from the same parts as Ironfist and sound like clans that have been around as long.
Old-tongue names are what the clan calls itself. They use a harsher version of the given-name grammar, with kh and z, and endings that gloss as a place or a people: -grund (hall), -gard (stronghold), -rak (clan), -holm (hill). Khorgrund, Brakgard, Thondrak. In many settings the forged compound is simply the outsiders’ translation of the old-tongue name, which lets you use both: Clan Khorgrund, called the Emberbrows.
The dwarf name generator produces both traditions, and the clan generator extends the old-tongue grammar to any culture that names by descent.
Length and rank
Dwarves signal rank with length. A miner is Borin. His clan-father is Borindur. The king who founded the hold, dead six hundred years, is Borindurmund Emberbrow, First of the Deep, and nobody says all of it except at funerals. When you name an NPC, choose the length for the station: short for the tavern, long for the throne.
Building one by hand
Hard core, low vowel, closed syllable: Thor. A second syllable if you want weight, respecting the sonorant rule: Thor-gar. Check the ending’s meaning: -gar, spear. Clan: material and object that say something about the family’s trade, Ember and hewer. Thorgar Emberhewer, a spear-carrier from a line of smiths who work by ember-light. Say it. It lands.
Frequently asked questions
Quick answers to what players and writers ask us most
Where do dwarf names in fantasy come from?
Tolkien took his from the Dvergatal, a list of dwarf names in the Old Norse Poetic Edda, and every setting since has kept that Norse sound. The sound is public; specific names are not, which is why generators work from the rules rather than the list.
Do female dwarves have different names?
In most settings the core is shared and the ending differs. Endings like -a, -hild, -dis and -run read feminine; -in, -rik, -gar and -grim read masculine. Some settings give dwarves no gendered names at all.
Should a dwarf's clan name be in English or dwarvish?
Both traditions exist. Forged English compounds (Ironfist, Emberbrow) are what outsiders and players remember; old-tongue names (Khorgrund) are what the clan calls itself. Many tables use the compound as a translation of the old-tongue name.