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Puritan Name Generator

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Puritan Name Generator
Generate authentic Puritan names — the distinctive names used by English Puritans in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. The Puritans were a Protestant reforming movement within the Church of England who sought to purify the church of Catholic remnants. Many Puritans emigrated to New England — the Pilgrim Fathers on the Mayflower (1620) and the Great Migration (1630s) — founding the Massachusetts Bay Colony and shaping early American culture profoundly. Puritan naming culture was shaped by deep theological conviction. Rather than naming children after Catholic saints, Puritans favoured two principal strategies: virtue names that expressed Christian qualities and spiritual aspirations (Faith, Hope, Charity, Grace, Patience, Temperance, Thankful, Increase, Preserved, Praisegod, Lament, Humility, Obedience) and Biblical names from the Old and New Testaments. The most distinctive Puritan names are the extended virtue names and phrases: Kill-Sin, Fear-God, Be-Thankful, Die-Well, Fly-Debate, Search-The-Scriptures, Safe-Deliverance, and the famous Praisegod Barbon. Puritan surnames are drawn from the network of godly ministers and prominent Puritan families of 17th-century England and New England. This generator produces authentic Puritan virtue names paired with historically attested Puritan surnames.
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Unfeigned Foxe
Small-Hope Blatcher
Constant Hake
Clarity Rogers
Diffidence Browne
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About the Puritan Name Generator

The Puritan Name Generator produces authentic Puritan names — the distinctive naming tradition of English Puritans in the 16th, 17th, and early 18th centuries. The Puritans were a Protestant reforming movement within the Church of England who sought to purify it of what they saw as remaining Catholic elements. Many emigrated to New England — the Pilgrim Fathers on the Mayflower (1620) and the Great Migration of the 1630s — founding Massachusetts, Connecticut, and other New England colonies.

The generator combines two categories: Puritan virtue and phrase names (the most distinctive Puritan contribution to English naming) and surnames drawn from the community of godly Puritan ministers, families, and their descendants in 17th-century England and New England. The result produces names in the authentic Puritan format: virtue name + Puritan family surname.

Puritan naming theology rejected naming children after Catholic saints in favour of names that expressed Christian conviction, biblical virtue, or theological aspiration. This produced some of the most unusual names in English history — names like Kill-Sin, Fear-God, Praise-God, Search-The-Scriptures, Die-Well, and Fly-Debate — that were genuinely given to real children in 17th-century England and New England.

Puritan Naming Theology and Tradition

Virtue Names

The most common Puritan naming strategy was the use of abstract virtue names that expressed Christian qualities and spiritual aspirations. These names were theologically intentional — giving a child the name Faith, Hope, or Charity was a public declaration of values and a constant reminder of Christian duty. Common Puritan virtue names include: Faith, Hope, Charity, Grace, Patience, Temperance, Constance, Comfort, Mercy, Prudence, Obedience, Thankful, Increase (meaning spiritual growth), Preserved (from God's preservation), Silence, and Submission. These names were given to both boys and girls, and some (like Grace, Faith, Hope, Charity) survive as common English names today, though their Puritan theological origins are largely forgotten.

Extreme Puritan Names

The most remarkable aspect of Puritan naming was the practice of giving children extended phrase names expressing theological positions or spiritual aspirations. These were not hypothetical or satirical but were genuinely recorded in English parish registers of the 17th century: Kill-Sin Pimple (baptised 1609, Sussex), Fear-God Barebon, Praisegod Barebon (the leatherworker and parliamentarian — whose name became notorious when his son was called Nicolas-If-Jesus-Christ-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned Barebon), Be-Courteous Cole, Sorry-For-Sin Coupard, Fly-Debate Roberts, Search-The-Scriptures Moreton, Stand-Fast-On-High Stringer, Weep-Not Billing, and Faint-Not Hewett. These names were concentrated in Sussex, Kent, and East Anglia — heartlands of radical Puritanism — and peaked in the 1590s–1640s.

Puritan New England

The Great Migration (1630–1640) brought approximately 20,000 Puritans from England to New England, establishing Massachusetts Bay Colony, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Haven. The Puritan naming tradition flourished in New England — ministers like Increase Mather (1639–1723) and his son Cotton Mather (1663–1728) bear characteristic Puritan names. The Mayflower Pilgrims (1620) brought names like Resolved White, Wrestling Brewster, Humility Cooper, and Remember Allerton — all genuine Pilgrim names. New England Puritan naming also favoured Old Testament biblical names that had been unpopular in Catholic Europe: Ezra, Nehemiah, Obadiah, Micah, Jedediah, Hezekiah, Keziah, Abigail, and Bethia. The New England Puritan naming tradition profoundly shaped early American naming culture.

Puritan Surnames

Puritan surnames are drawn from the network of godly ministers, families, and communities that formed the backbone of 17th-century English and New England Puritanism. Famous Puritan families included the Mathers (Increase and Cotton), the Bradstreets (Anne Bradstreet — the first published American poet), the Winthrops (John Winthrop, first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony), the Cottons (John Cotton of Boston), the Hookers (Thomas Hooker, founder of Connecticut), the Shepards (Thomas Shepard), the Davenports (John Davenport, founder of New Haven), the Cromwells (Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England), and many others. The surnames collected here represent this network of godly families and their communities in England and New England.

How to Use These Names

  • Create characters for early American colonial fiction — Puritan settlers, ministers, and their families
  • Write characters for the Salem Witch Trials (1692) — accusers, accused, and witnesses
  • Develop characters for the English Civil War period (1642–1651) — Roundhead soldiers and Parliament men
  • Name characters for Cromwell's Commonwealth and Protectorate (1649–1660)
  • Create Mayflower pilgrim characters for fiction or games set at Plymouth Colony (1620)
  • Write characters for dark Puritan-inspired horror (like Arthur Miller's The Crucible)
  • Generate names for the Great Migration period — English Puritans establishing New England towns
  • Create NPCs for historical RPGs or alternate history fiction with a Puritan-era New England setting

Famous Puritan Names and Their Bearers

Praisegod Barbon (also Barebone or Barebon, c.1598–1680) was a London leatherworker and Puritan sectarian whose extraordinary name became notorious — and gave his name to the Barebones Parliament (1653), the short-lived assembly appointed by Oliver Cromwell. His son Nicholas Barbon (c.1640–1698) became a pioneer of fire insurance and property development, effectively inventing modern urban real estate. Increase Mather (1639–1723) was one of the most powerful figures in colonial New England — minister of Boston's Old North Church, president of Harvard, and author of "An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences." His name Increase refers to the increase of God's people in the world (his father Richard Mather prayed for increase of the family).

Cotton Mather (1663–1728), son of Increase, was the dominant religious voice of his generation — prolific author of over 450 works, involved in the Salem Witch Trials controversy, and one of the most complex figures in American history. His name Cotton honoured his maternal grandfather John Cotton. Anne Bradstreet (née Dudley, 1612–1672) — one of the first poets in North America and the first published female poet in the English colonies — bore a characteristically Puritan surname. Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) — Lord Protector of the Commonwealth — came from a minor Puritan gentry family.

The Pilgrim Father names from the Mayflower passenger list (1620) include remarkable Puritan names: Resolved White (a boy aged 5 on the voyage, who survived and lived to old age in Plymouth), Wrestling Brewster (son of the elder William Brewster), Humility Cooper (a young passenger), Remember Allerton (daughter of Isaac Allerton), and Love Brewster (son of William Brewster). These names — Resolved, Wrestling, Humility, Remember, Love — capture the full range of Puritan naming imagination.

Frequently Asked Questions
Which Puritan names survived into modern use? +
Many Puritan virtue and biblical names have survived into the modern English naming tradition, so thoroughly assimilated that their Puritan origins are forgotten. The most successful survivors: Grace — now one of the most popular English names worldwide, almost no one associates it with its Puritan virtue-name origin; Faith — common throughout the English-speaking world; Hope — increasingly popular in recent decades; Patience — used steadily, particularly in the UK; Constance (short form Connie) — persistent in English naming; Mercy — revived in recent years; Prudence — used but rarer; Temperance — has experienced some revival, partly through the TV show Bones whose lead character bears this name; Charity — used occasionally. Old Testament names popularised or revived by the Puritans: Abigail, Rebecca, Deborah, Dinah, Hannah, Ruth, Naomi, Seth, Caleb, Ezra, Elijah, Benjamin, Samuel, Joshua, Isaac — all now considered mainstream English names owe part of their currency to the Puritan revival of Hebrew scriptural names in the 17th century. The most distinctive Puritan names (Kill-Sin, Fly-Debate, Sorry-For-Sin) were entirely abandoned after the Restoration period and are historical curiosities today.
Who were the Pilgrim Fathers and what names did they carry? +
The Pilgrim Fathers were the 102 passengers who sailed on the Mayflower from Plymouth, England, in September 1620 and landed at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, in November 1620 — founding the Plymouth Colony, the second successful English colony in America (after Jamestown, 1607). The Pilgrims were Separatists — Puritans who had separated from the Church of England entirely — who had previously lived in Leiden, Netherlands, to escape religious persecution. The Mayflower passenger list includes characteristically Puritan names: William Bradford (who became governor and wrote the colony's history, Of Plymouth Plantation), William Brewster (the elder, religious leader), Myles Standish (military leader — originally not a Puritan), Edward Winslow, John Alden (the cooper, subject of Longfellow's poem), Dorothy May Bradford, Mary Brewster, Priscilla Mullins (Alden's future wife). Children's names include the distinctively Puritan: Resolved White (aged 5), Wrestling Brewster, Love Brewster, Humility Cooper, and Remember Allerton. Of the 102 passengers, 45 died in the first winter. The Pilgrim story became central to American mythology — Thanksgiving originated from the Pilgrims' harvest feast with the Wampanoag people in 1621.
What are the most extreme Puritan names ever recorded? +
The most extreme Puritan names are genuinely attested in English parish registers from the late 16th and 17th centuries. The most famous is Nicolas-If-Jesus-Christ-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned Barebon (baptised c.1640 in London), son of Praisegod Barebon — who mercifully went by "Nicolas Barbon" as an adult and became a pioneer of urban real estate development. Other genuine extreme examples: Kill-Sin Pimple (baptised Warbleton, Sussex, 1609), Be-Courteous Cole (baptised 1610), Search-The-Scriptures Moreton (baptised 1609), Stand-Fast-On-High Stringer (twin brother named Seek-Wisdom Stringer, baptised 1617), Fly-Debate Roberts (baptised 1591), Sorry-For-Sin Coupard (baptised 1589), and Faint-Not Hewett (baptised 1601). These names are concentrated in Sussex, Kent, and East Anglia in the decades 1580–1640. The phenomenon is documented by historian Jennifer Sherwood and others. Many of these families belonged to radical Separatist or Brownist congregations rather than mainstream Church of England Puritanism. After the Restoration (1660), when Puritanism was suppressed, these names quickly disappeared.
What were the Salem Witch Trials and how did Puritan names feature in them? +
The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 in Salem Village (now Danvers), Massachusetts, were one of the most notorious episodes in American colonial history. Between February 1692 and May 1693, over 200 people were accused of witchcraft, 30 were found guilty, 19 were executed by hanging, one man (Giles Corey) was pressed to death with stones, and five others died in prison. The trials began when a group of young girls — including Betty Parris (daughter of the minister Samuel Parris), Abigail Williams, Ann Putnam Jr., and Mary Walcott — began exhibiting strange behaviours and accused local women of witchcraft. The accused included Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, Tituba (an enslaved woman from Barbados), Rebecca Nurse, and eventually the former minister George Burroughs. The names of the accused and accusers are authentically Puritan: Samuel, Increase (Increase Mather visited Salem and later expressed doubts), Cotton (Cotton Mather attended executions), Elizabeth, Abigail, Rebecca, Mary, Sarah, Susannah, Martha. Arthur Miller's 1953 play The Crucible dramatised the trials as an allegory for McCarthyism, making these Puritan names famous worldwide.
How did Puritan theology shape their choice of names? +
Puritan naming theology was directly grounded in their Protestant convictions. Mainstream Puritans objected to naming children after Catholic saints for several theological reasons: saints were not proper objects of religious honour, sainthood was a human invention not supported by Scripture, and many saints' legends were mediaeval fabrications. Instead, Puritans preferred three approaches. First, Old Testament biblical names that had been suppressed under Catholicism — the names of Hebrew patriarchs, judges, and prophets: Abigail, Hezekiah, Obadiah, Ezra, Nehemiah, Micah, Jedediah. Second, abstract virtue names expressing Christian qualities: Faith, Hope, Charity, Patience, Grace, Mercy, Temperance, Constance, Comfort — names that functioned as constant moral reminders. Third, phrase names expressing theological conviction: Praisegod, Fear-God, Increase, Preserved, Delivered, Renewed, Repent, Remember — sometimes extended to full theological propositions. This naming strategy was fundamentally performative: giving a child the name "Thankful" or "Kill-Sin" was a public declaration of Puritan faith. By the second generation in New England, the most extreme phrase names had largely faded, replaced by biblical names and moderate virtue names, while the mainstream Protestant tradition gradually moved back toward saints' names by the 18th century.