Mafia Name Generator

It gives you a small cast, not just one name. One result makes the typed name a boss: Don Marcus Moretti. One invents a soldier with a nickname and a family: Enzo "Icepick" Vitale. One creates a woman at the head of a family: Donna Tessa Vitale. One writes the typed name as an adviser: Daniela DeLuca, Consigliere. Family names come from a bank of Italian surnames of the kind crime fiction uses.

That spread is useful when you are plotting. A novelist needs to know who gives orders, who advises and who carries them out. A murder-mystery host needs enough roles for the table. Everything here is in the tradition of the gangster film and the pulp novel. It is storytelling material, and it does not present real organised crime, which is brutal, as something to admire.

Fictional mafia names lean on a few conventions that audiences learned from films. The family is known by one surname. The head is addressed by title and first name. The adviser, the consigliere, stands slightly outside the chain of command and is often the calmest person in the room. Soldiers get nicknames because there are too many men called Tony for anyone to keep straight.

Use those conventions and then bend one. A story where the adviser is the youngest person at the table, or where the nickname is a lie, feels fresher than one that repeats the template. Vary the sounds of your surnames as well: if the rival families are Moretti and Marchetti, readers will mix them up by chapter three. Pick names that start with different letters.

• One surname per family, repeated consistently
• Titles for the top, nicknames for the street level
• Different first letters for rival families
• A reason behind each nickname, even if the reader learns it late