Birth year, not story year
A seventy-year-old in 1995 was born in 1925. The desk uses that decade so the name fits the generation, not the year the scene is set.
Pick a birth year or period, then roll a cast of era-accurate given names from US birth records and English period lists. Private in your browser.
Useful output, not a score
A seventy-year-old in 1995 was born in 1925. The desk uses that decade so the name fits the generation, not the year the scene is set.
Shuffle a set of given names and surnames, lock the ones you want, reroll one card, and skip names already in the draft.
US decades show rank and peak decade from the national birth file. Earlier English period lists are membership, not a fake rank.
Enter the story year and age, pick a birth decade, or open a period list for births before 1880.
Choose gender mix, how common the name should feel, a starting letter, and surnames. Add given names to avoid.
Keep a name, reroll one card, or copy cues and a memo into notes. Nothing leaves this tab.
Readers hear generation. A detective born in 1952 should not be named Jayden; Linda or Gary holds. The birth year is story year minus age, and that decade is what the desk reads.
Given names from 1880 onward come from the US Social Security Administration's public national baby-name file — Social Security card applications, aggregated by decade. Births before 1880 use curated English-language period lists. Nothing is fetched while you use the page.
The ranked decades are US records. For earlier English-language stories, use a period list. Surnames can be US Census, English, Irish, Scottish, or mixed. The page does not invent ranks for countries it does not have files for.
Yes. Look up a given name against a birth decade to see whether it appears in that decade's top recorded names, when it first does, and where it peaked.
No. The name lists ship with the page. Rolling, looking up, and copying all run here. Inkwell does not receive the names you generate.
Turn a word-count or page goal into realistic writing-day targets, weekly pacing, buffer time, milestone dates, and a copyable schedule.
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Open toolTurn Fountain sections, synopses, scene headings, and opening action into an ordered visual story map with clean Markdown export.
Open toolEstimate a cast table-read session from dialogue and action word counts, then tune reading pace, directions, setup, breaks, and scene timing.
Open toolThese names stay in this browser tab. Copy a cue or memo into a draft after you sign in.
A seventy-year-old in a 1995 story was born in 1925. The desk uses that birth decade — US national records from 1880 on, and English-language period lists before that.
1920s
Keep a name, then shuffle. Reroll replaces one unlocked card.
ELLA
#95 for girls in the 1920s
Peaked in the 2010s at #14.
CALVIN
#80 for boys in the 1920s
Peak decade for this list.
ALBERTA
#146 for girls in the 1920s
Peaked in the 1900s at #116.
RONALD
#93 for boys in the 1920s
Peaked in the 1940s at #10.
KATHERINE
#63 for girls in the 1920s
Peaked in the 1990s at #27.
Greek; often linked to “pure.”
CLYDE
#68 for boys in the 1920s
Peaked in the 1900s at #56.