FantasyNames.io

Black Cat Name Generator

A lean black cat with one yellow eye and one green eye creeps along a mossy wall, a forepaw raised over a gnawed candle stub.
CCLXVII
Familiars of Night Lanes

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Felis umbrivaga

Danger
Size
10 inches
Activity
Nocturnal

Name generator

Press Generate to draw a name.

Gender
Length

Kindred Arcana

Black Cat names and their meanings

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

Hush Names

Single short names that sound like a breath let out between the teeth.

Hour Epithets

A soft first name followed by the hour or night the cat is usually seen.

Doorstep Titles

A title built from the place it sits and the thing it watches.

Soot Names

Descriptive names built from black things found in a house, worn smooth by muttering.

Watcher Names

Names that point to the eye behind you rather than the cat itself.

How black cat names are made

Names for the Black Cat are mostly not names. People who live near one avoid calling it anything, so what survives are descriptions muttered behind a hand and handed down. The sound palette leans on soft, hushing consonants (s, sh, th, l, n, m) and dark, closed vowels (u, o, short i), with few hard stops and almost no bright, open endings. Names run one to three syllables. Single names are the oldest and the most hushed. Longer forms add an epithet drawn from a color, an hour, a doorway, a wall, or a trade it is thought to haunt, such as a candlemaker's shelf.

Deeds are rarely used, since nobody can say what it has done. Ancestry is avoided entirely, because no one has ever found a litter. What is avoided: the endings -y and -ie, which mark a pet; any name borrowed from a living neighbor; anything that rhymes, because a rhyme can be called across a yard. Children's names for it run shorter and sillier and get scolded. Elders use titles instead, a place plus a watching word. Example shapes: one syllable, a hiss and a closed vowel; two syllables, soft consonants, ending on a consonant; a short name followed by an epithet of the hour.

The black cat: bestiary entry

"Which eye is it using?" a boy asks me on Wapurgy Lane, pointing at the cat on the wall. It is a better question than most I am asked. The Black Cat's eyes do not match. The left is a flat lamp yellow and watches whatever stands in front of it. The right is a green so deep it reads as black until a flame crosses it, and it rests on a point a few paces behind the person being looked at. I held a candle at the cat's eye level and timed the pupils against my pocket watch. A house cat's closes in under two seconds. The left took forty-one, and the right never moved at all.

The coat is the black of a stove lid, short and close, with no undercoat. It gives back no light. Under a lantern it shows no sheen, only a cat-shaped gap in the evening, and moths that pass in front of it seem to blink out and return. This one carries a round hole in the right ear, pea-sized and clean at the rim, as if punched. Nobody at Wapurgy will call it anything, not even puss. A cat with a name has an address, they say, and it will come to the address.

The paws are narrow and the pads are black, but the tracks are easy to know. In frost or spilled flour each print shows four toes and a fifth, a small round dent set behind the heel, where no cat has a toe. It eats moths, mice and the stubs of tallow candles, gnawed in neat rows along a shelf edge. Where it has slept in an attic, the dust is wiped away in a circle the size of a dinner plate. Lettice Hurn, who sells candles at Ursle Green, keeps her ends in a lidded crock because, she says, it counts them.

The tail is long, carried in a hook, and the tip lies out of true, bent a quarter turn to the left as if set wrong. When it crosses a lane ahead of a walker, the walker stops. On the Ursle Green road people wait for a second traveler to go over first. It leaves by the hedge and never the gate, and afterward it sits looking at an empty doorway. If the left eye is for whoever stands in front, whom is the green eye keeping watch on, the one standing behind?

Classification
Uncanny familiar, feline
Habitat
Garden walls, sills, attic rafters
Danger
Low
Size
10 inches at the shoulder
Activity
Nocturnal
Realm
Hedgerow villages and night lanes
Binomial
Felis umbrivaga
Diet
Moths, mice, tallow candle ends
Temperament
Watchful, aloof, patient

Questions about black cat names

What kinds of names suit a Black Cat?

Names that describe rather than call: short, soft, with hissing or hushing sounds, often built from a color, an hour or a doorway. They sound like something said under the breath. Stories about a Black Cat tend to work best when its name feels like a label others avoid, not a pet name shouted across a yard.

Why are Black Cat names rarely pet names?

Villagers near the Black Cat believe a cat with a name has an address, and it will come to it. So the names here work as epithets, titles or descriptions that people mutter about it rather than call to it. That gives characters a reason to hesitate before using one, which suits tales of familiars and doorstep watchers.

Can I use these names freely?

Yes. Every name this generator produces can be used freely in any creative work, including novels, games, tabletop campaigns, comics and films. No attribution or permission is needed. Change spellings, pair names with titles, or combine two results as you like. The names are meant to be taken and put to work in whatever story you are telling.

How long is a typical Black Cat name?

One to three syllables, rarely more. Short names fit the creature's habit of being half spoken, and longer ones usually come from adding an epithet, such as an hour of the night or a place on a wall. Names ending in a bright, bouncy vowel are avoided, since those belong to pets.