Tavern Name Generator

Why inns have signs at all

For most of history most people could not read, so a house selling drink had to be known by a picture. The oldest marker was a bush or a bundle of greenery on a pole over the door, which is where the old saying “good wine needs no bush” comes from: a good house shouldn't need to advertise. Over the centuries the bush gave way to painted boards and carved figures, and the picture on the board became the name of the house.

In London, a law of 1393 under Richard II required anyone brewing ale to sell to hang out a sign, or forfeit the ale. The usual explanation is inspection: the official ale-tasters needed to know which houses to visit. Signs were not new, but rules like this made them part of the trade, and the habit of naming a house after its picture has now lasted more than six hundred years.

Where the familiar names come from

Heraldry gave pub signs most of their pictures. A lord's badge or a family's coat of arms over the door showed whose land the house stood on, or whose favour it wanted. The White Hart was the personal badge of Richard II, the same king as that law, and it is still among the commonest names in England. The Red Lion is usually counted the most common of all. Several stories explain it, from royal badges to noble ones, and there is probably no single answer.

Loyalty to the crown is written all over the country. The Royal Oak remembers Charles II hiding in an oak tree at Boscobel after losing the Battle of Worcester in 1651; once he was restored as king, the story became a favourite sign. The Crown, the King's Head and the Rose and Crown said the same thing more plainly: this house is on the monarch's side. The Arms names do the same for a family, usually the one that owned the land or the building.

The church gave signs of its own. The Crossed Keys are the keys of heaven held by St Peter, and the Lamb and Flag is a Christian emblem of the Lamb of God. A Bell might point to the church next door, or to the ringers who drank there after practice. Work supplied the rest: the Plough and the Wheatsheaf belong to farming country, the Anchor and the Ship to ports and river towns, the Horseshoes to a forge, and the Bricklayers Arms and Carpenters Arms to trades rather than families.

Pairs, numbers, heads and rests

Pairs are the most British pattern of all. Some describe a scene, like the Fox and Hounds, a hunting picture, or the Coach and Horses, which promised a stop on a coaching road. Some put two loyal symbols side by side, as the Rose and Crown does. Others are puzzles nobody has solved: the Cat and Fiddle has several explanations and no agreed one. Two things on a board are easy to picture and hard to forget, which is why the generator leans on pairs for taverns.

Numbers come from heraldry, where a charge such as a bell, a barrel or a horseshoe is often shown three times on a shield. The Three Tuns takes its barrels from the arms of the Vintners' Company, the London wine merchants, and a Three Horseshoes often stood by a smithy. Three is by far the usual number, though there are Two Brewers and Seven Stars about too, and the generator picks three most often for the same reason.

A beast's head is one of the oldest charges in heraldry, and a carved head over the door could be made out from the far end of a street: hence the Bull's Head, the Boar's Head and the Nag's Head. The Rest names are about the road. Inns stood on drove roads, where drovers walked cattle and sheep to market over many days, and a sign naming its guests told a traveller where to stop. A Drover's Rest or a Ferryman's Rest says where the house stands and who drinks there.

Tavern, inn or pub

The three words once meant different houses. An inn offered beds, food and stabling, and the great coaching inns, with an archway into a yard where horses were changed, lined the main roads until the railways took their trade in the nineteenth century. A tavern sold wine, mostly in towns, to people who could afford it. The alehouse was the humble one, often a room in somebody's home, and the public house, or pub, grew out of it.

The generator follows those differences. Choose inn and you get more Rests and coaching signs, because an inn is about the road. Choose pub and you get more Arms, heads and single pictures, the names you would expect on a village high street. Choose tavern and the signs get bolder, with more pairs and adjective names, and fantasy beasts such as the wyvern, the kraken and the phoenix join the lions and swans. Coaches, ploughs and wheatsheaves only appear on inns and pubs.

Choosing a name for your story or campaign

A good tavern name is short, easy to picture and easy to say three hours into a session. Players will shorten it whatever you do, so test the nickname as well: the Laughing Goose becomes the Goose by the second visit, which is fine, but if two inns in the same town shorten to one word, rename one of them. A sign somebody could actually paint, with one or two clear things on it, sticks better than a clever phrase.

The mood and the description line set the scene for you. A cosy house brings words like snug, thatched and low-beamed, and something it's known for, from its honey cakes to a cat that sleeps on the bar. A rowdy one comes with fiddle nights and loud card games, a mysterious one with a stranger in the corner seat or a door no one opens. Read the line out as the players walk in, then add one detail of your own: the landlord's name, the smell, who is already there.

A town with several inns feels real when they differ. Give the coaching inn by the bridge a Rest or a coach on its sign, the old pub on the green a family's Arms, and the dockside tavern something louder, like the Roaring Kraken. Switching between tavern, inn and pub gives you all three in a few clicks. Keep the signs from repeating a beast as well, since three Red Lions in one small town is a muddle rather than a tradition.

A sign can also start a quest. Ask who painted the Hooded Owl and why; let the Three Bells be missing a bell that someone stole; let the Blackwood Arms belong to a family that left town in a hurry. A name with a reason behind it gives players something to ask the landlord about, and the note on each card already gives you the real reason such names exist, ready to bend into a story of your own.