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Giant Ape Name Generator

A fourteen-foot slate-black giant ape with a gray saddle of hair and a split left ear leaps from an orchard branch under.
XCI
Peelers of the Orchard Hills

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Simia decorticans

Danger
Size
14 ft standing
Activity
Diurnal

Name generator

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Gender
Length

Kindred Arcana

Giant Ape names and their meanings

Select a name to copy it. Every name below is free to use.

Orchard Nickname

A homely name coined by growers from the fruit or crop the ape prefers.

Peel Epithet

A short first name followed by an epithet describing a habit of peeling, stacking or sulking.

Worn Feast Name

A name smoothed down from a saint's day or feast week, the way place names in the valleys are.

Mark Name

A plain name taken from a visible mark such as a split ear, a gray saddle or a bald patch.

Boulder Name

A name tied to the ridge, rock or terrace where the ape keeps its daily routine.

How giant ape names are made

Giant ape names are given to the animal, not by it. People who live near an ape coin them from what they see it do, so the sound palette is that of a farm kitchen: soft consonants such as m, n, l and b, long open vowels, and now and then a thick cluster borrowed from a worn saint's day or a fruit. Most names run two or three syllables. An ape rarely carries more than one, and the name usually arrives with an epithet fastened to a habit, a mark or a favorite tree. Structure is a single name plus epithet, and the epithet does the real work. Ancestry plays almost no part, since nobody knows where an ape comes from.

Sources are trade (the crop it prefers), deeds (what it spoiled or spared) and the calendar (the feast week it first appeared). Names avoid the sharp, barking sounds used for wolves and bears, and anything that sounds like a threat, because locals hold that an ape that hears itself called dangerous will sulk. Older apes collect longer epithets as stories pile up. A young one has only a first name or a nickname borrowed from the field where it was seen. Example shapes: a soft two-syllable name plus "the" and a fruit; a feast-day name worn smooth; one clipped word for a habit.

The giant ape: bestiary entry

A giant ape peels everything it eats, including things that have no skin. Apples, pears and walnuts lose their coats under one thumbnail in a single curl. So do turnips, cheeses lifted from dairy sheds, and on one recorded occasion a candle. The curls fall where the ape sits, and a line of them across a hillside, brown at the edges and tight as wood shavings, is how the animal is tracked. Orchard keepers read the line for direction and for how long ago it was laid. Dry peel is also good kindling, which is the only reason anyone gathers it.

The oldest account is a complaint from the parish of Tudeve, where a whole field of turnips lost its skins in one night. The clerk blamed boys from the next valley and fined their fathers. Their innocence took a generation to establish. The second account is better. Gerrit Maule, a miller at Nintide, watched one in daylight from his loft and wrote that it sat against his millpond wall, peeled forty winter pears, stacked the peels as high as his knee, and left without touching the mill. The ape has no interest in grain. By the time the terraces were surveyed, the peel lines ran eleven miles from the river to the ridge, and farmers in both valleys had stopped calling the animal a thief. They call it the Peeler now, though nobody has tested whether it answers.

The ape that works the Nintide terraces stands fourteen feet and weighs about as much as a loaded hay wagon. Its hair is slate black with a gray saddle across the shoulders, and its left ear is split into two lobes. It sits on terrace walls without cracking them, having learned which stones are laid dry. Each afternoon it walks to the same boulder on the ridge above Tudeve and scratches its back against it for a quarter hour, eyes half shut, one foot kicking slowly at nothing. The boulder has a groove as smooth as a saddle seat. The ape is touchy about bruises. Finding a pear with one soft spot, it sets the fruit back in the crook of its branch, carefully, and ignores that tree for the rest of the day.

Orchard people in both valleys say the same thing to newcomers: leave the top third of every tree unpicked, keep the windfalls in covered crates, and bury bruised fruit the same day.

Classification
Giant forest ape
Habitat
Orchard terraces and fruit forest
Danger
Moderate
Size
14 ft standing, 3,000 lb
Activity
Diurnal
Realm
Orchard hills and river terraces
Binomial
Simia decorticans
Diet
Fruit, tubers, bark, honeycomb
Temperament
Placid, touchy about bruised fruit

Questions about giant ape names

What kind of names suit a giant ape?

Names that sound like they came from a farm kitchen suit it best. Use soft consonants, open vowels and two or three syllables, then add an epithet taken from a habit such as peeling fruit, sulking over bruises or scratching against one boulder. Harsh, barking sounds read more like wolves than apes.

How long should a giant ape's name be?

Two or three syllables is typical for the first name. The epithet that follows can be longer and tends to grow with age as villagers add stories. A young ape may have only a nickname taken from the field where it was first seen, with no epithet at all.

Where do giant ape names come from?

They come from the people living nearby, drawn from the calendar, the crop it prefers, a visible mark or something it did. Worn saint's day and feast names work well for valleys and orchards. Ancestry is rarely used, because nobody in these stories knows where an ape comes from.

Can I use these giant ape names freely?

Yes. Names from this generator are free to use in any creative work, including novels, games, tabletop campaigns, comics and films. No attribution is needed. Change them, combine them or build on them however suits your story, and keep whatever you like without asking permission.