Tavern Names: 100 Original Tavern Names for Tabletop Games

Short answer

• 100 names, four moods: numbers 1 to 25 are cozy taverns, 26 to 50 are rowdy, 51 to 75 are mysterious, and 76 to 100 are grand. Roll a d100, or skip the roll and pick by the mood of the scene.
• A d100 roll uses two ten sided dice: one die for the tens digit and one for the ones digit. A roll of 40 and 7 is 47, and double zero reads as 100.
• A tavern name is compressed worldbuilding: it signals price, safety, clientele, and secrets in two or three words, before any description or dialogue.
• Pair the name with one detail: a signature drink, a strange regular, a house rule, or a smell. Players remember the name because the detail proves it.
• You can coin your own: most tavern names combine a creature, object, person, or place with a quality or a second image. The patterns section below breaks the method down.

Introduction

Every adventuring party needs a tavern, and every tavern needs a name the players will still be using three sessions later. The tavern is where quests are offered, rumors are overheard, maps change hands, and the party argues about money within earshot of exactly the wrong people. A good name does half of that scene setting before you describe a single chair. It tells the players whether they can relax here, whether a fight is likely, and whether the person in the corner booth wants to be found.

This article gives you 100 original tavern names organized as a d100 table in four sets of 25: cozy, rowdy, mysterious, and grand. You can roll for a name when the party surprises you by asking what the inn is called, or read the sets by mood and pick the one that fits the night ahead. After the table, the article explains why tavern names work the way they do, drawing on the real history of inn and tavern signs, sets out the naming patterns behind the list so you can coin names of your own, and shows how to turn a name into a tavern scene players remember. The names are free to use in your own games and stories.

How to Use This d100 Table

Roll openly and commit to the result. A rowdy name rolled for a quiet village creates a story all by itself: why is this place rowdy, and who keeps it that way? A grand name rolled for a poor town asks the same question in the other direction. Maybe the tavern was built in better times, maybe the owner has ambitions, or maybe the grandeur is a coat of paint over rot. Mismatches between a name and its setting are not errors. They are hooks.

If you would rather choose, use the four sets as mood menus. Cozy names suit home bases, healing stops, and villages the party is meant to love and later defend. Rowdy names suit ports, mining camps, and garrison towns. Mysterious names suit crossroads, old quarters, and meetings with people who give only one name themselves. Grand names suit capitals, wealthy trading cities, and establishments where the party will feel underdressed.

Keep the table at hand during play, not only during preparation. Parties invent taverns constantly: they ask for the nearest drinking house in a town you sketched ten minutes ago, or walk past the place you planned and pick the one across the street. A d100 table turns that moment from a stall into a small ceremony. Let a player roll: a name the dice chose is a name the party tends to adopt as its own.

Cozy Taverns, 1 to 25

Cozy taverns are warm, small, and safe enough to sleep in. Expect low beams, a lit fire, food that tastes like someone cared, and an innkeeper who remembers names. Use these for home villages, way stations on kind roads, and the place the party returns to between adventures. A cozy name promises the players a rest, so deliver one: this is where letters wait and wounds heal.

1. The Hearthmouse
2. The Warm Kettle
3. The Sleepy Badger
4. The Honeyed Loaf
5. The Fireside Cat
6. The Woolen Blanket
7. The Apple Orchard Inn
8. The Teapot Hen
9. The Creaking Rocking Chair
10. The Lantern Nook
11. The Buttered Scone
12. The Quiet Porch
13. The Snug Badger Hole
14. The Winter Quilt
15. The Gentle Hound
16. The Porridge Pot
17. The Old Oak Table
18. The Singing Teapot
19. The Cosy Corner
20. The Featherbed Inn
21. The Warm Slipper
22. The Storyteller Seat
23. The Mellow Cider House
24. The Drowsy Owl
25. The Home Hearth

Rowdy Taverns, 26 to 50

Rowdy taverns are loud before the door opens. Expect long tables, open gambling, singing that is more enthusiastic than accurate, and a landlord who prices broken furniture into the beer. Use these for dock districts, festival nights, and soldiers on leave. A rowdy name warns the players that subtlety will be hard here: conversations carry, strangers join tables uninvited, and a quiet word with a contact will need to happen somewhere else.

26. The Broken Tankard
27. The Roaring Boar
28. The Drunken Ogre
29. The Brawling Bard
30. The Spilled Ale House
31. The Laughing Goblin
32. The Dice and Dagger
33. The Rowdy Rooster
34. The Thumping Boot
35. The Wild Tankard
36. The Shouting Match
37. The Tipsy Troll
38. The Bar Fight Inn
39. The Loud Lute
40. The Stumbling Sailor
41. The Bawdy Ballad
42. The Clashing Mug
43. The Rowdy Ruckus
44. The Ale Storm
45. The Dancing Table
46. The Hoarse Shout
47. The Guzzling Goat
48. The Midnight Rumpus
49. The Brawlers Rest
50. The Unruly Unicorn

Mysterious Taverns, 51 to 75

Mysterious taverns keep their secrets in plain sight. Expect low light, private booths, a watched door, and staff who answer questions with questions. Use these for meetings with informants, smugglers, spies, and anyone who slides a folded note across the table. A mysterious name tells players to pay attention: details here are clues rather than decoration. If the lanterns are veiled, someone chose to veil them, and finding out why can carry a whole session.

51. The Veiled Lantern
52. The Whispering Well
53. The Hooded Stranger
54. The Shadowed Door
55. The Silent Bell
56. The Foggy Mirror
57. The Hidden Key
58. The Moonlit Mask
59. The Forgotten Letter
60. The Cloaked Figure
61. The Whispering Wall
62. The Midnight Pact
63. The Veil and Vine
64. The Starless Night Inn
65. The Locked Library
66. The Pale Lantern
67. The Secret Stair
68. The Wandering Shade
69. The Hollow Oath
70. The Misty Crossroads
71. The Silent Harp
72. The Black Cat Inn
73. The Riddle Door
74. The Fading Map
75. The Night Market Tavern

Grand Taverns, 76 to 100

Grand taverns have high ceilings, polished metal, staff in matching clothes, and prices the party reads twice. Use these for capitals, rich merchant quarters, and diplomatic meetings. A grand name sets a social challenge rather than a physical one. The danger here is embarrassment, exclusion, or debt, and the treasure is access: to people, information, and rooms where decisions are made.

76. The Golden Griffin
77. The Royal Stag
78. The Marble Hall Inn
79. The Silver Chalice
80. The Crowned Eagle
81. The Velvet Curtain
82. The Gilded Boar
83. The Sovereign Feast
84. The Crystal Goblet
85. The Grand Staircase
86. The Noble Hart
87. The Ivory Tower Tavern
88. The Regal Rose
89. The Majestic Moose
90. The Emperor Table
91. The Sapphire Cup
92. The Glorious Gate
93. The Knightly Rest
94. The Opal Lantern
95. The Banquet Hall
96. The Peacock Plume
97. The Diamond Dice
98. The Grand Gallop
99. The Radiant Court
100. The Legendary Hearth

Why Tavern Names Work: The Sign Over the Door

Fantasy tavern names feel traditional because real tavern and inn names were working tools, not decoration. In medieval Britain, the three kinds of drinking house were distinct businesses. Research on the history of British pubs, inns, and hotels describes alehouses as ordinary dwellings where the householder served home brewed ale, inns as purpose built establishments for travelers, with more bedrooms than an average house and substantial stabling, and taverns as sellers of wine. Because wine cost far more than ale or beer, taverns catered to richer patrons and were restricted to towns, where alehouses hugely outnumbered them.

All three also advertised with a sign. The same research notes that inns, taverns, and alehouses hung out a sign like other tradespeople, that a pole garlanded with foliage signified an alehouse, and that from the 14th century inns and taverns hung out a pictorial sign by which they could be identified in an age when many people could not read. Britannica makes the same point from the naming side: the early inns and taverns were identified by simple signs such as lions, dolphins, or black swans. A picture could be recognized by a traveler who could not read, remembered after one visit, and used as a direction: meet at the sign of the swan.

That history explains the grammar of the names in this list. A strong tavern name is a picture first and a phrase second. The Roaring Boar, the Silver Chalice, and the Black Cat Inn can each be painted on a board, seen from down a muddy street, and described to a stranger. Names built from abstract ideas rarely survive that test. A board cannot easily paint fairness, destiny, or sorrow, but it can paint a veiled lantern, and the veiled lantern then carries the mystery by itself. When you judge a name, ask the sign painter’s question: what exactly goes on the board?

Britannica also notes that many colorful pub names are corrupted forms of older phrases and titles, worn down by generations of speakers, and that in the 18th century the word Arms was appended to many pub names to show that the house stood under the protection of a noble family, or referred to the family that owned the land. Names have histories inside the world as well as outside it. A fictional name gains depth the same way: decide what it used to mean. The Crowned Eagle may have been the Eagle until a king slept there once, badly, and the name has traded on it ever since.

Tavern, Inn, Alehouse, or Tavern House: Choosing the Right Word

The words are often used loosely in games, but choosing deliberately sharpens a name. Call a place an inn when beds are the point: the name promises rooms, stabling, and a landlord used to strangers arriving at odd hours. Several names in the table carry Inn for exactly this reason, including the Apple Orchard Inn, the Featherbed Inn, and the Starless Night Inn: each tells travelers they can stay, not just drink. Call a place a tavern when drinking, eating, and company are the point and beds are incidental or absent. Call it an alehouse or cider house for the smallest, most local kind of establishment, the front room of somebody’s home, which is why the Mellow Cider House sits in the cozy set.

Britannica traces the same social range in the real world. Its tavern entry describes tavern keeping as growing alongside trade, travel, and industry throughout history, notes that medieval English inns were sanctuaries for wayfaring strangers, and records that by the 16th century the better taverns had become regular meeting places and unofficial clubhouses. Its public house entry adds that English common law treated inns and taverns as public houses with a duty to receive travelers willing to pay for food, drink, and lodging. For a game master, that duty is a gift: a named inn is a place the party has a right to enter, which makes it a reliable stage for meetings, eavesdropping, and trouble.

Suffixes steer tone, too. Hall suggests scale and ceremony, as in the Marble Hall Inn and the Banquet Hall. Rest suggests the road, a place chosen for sleep rather than society, as in the Brawlers Rest and the Knightly Rest. House suggests domestic scale, as in the Spilled Ale House. Leaving the suffix off entirely, as in the Whispering Well or the Hollow Oath, makes a name sound older and stranger, as if the building took its name from a landmark or an event rather than from a business decision.

The Naming Patterns Behind the List

Once you see the patterns, the table becomes a generator. Most of the 100 names are built from five recipes.

The first is the creature and quality pairing: an animal or being plus a state, mood, or action. The Sleepy Badger, the Drunken Ogre, the Tipsy Troll, and the Drowsy Owl all work this way. The creature gives the sign painter an image, the quality gives it a personality, and together they hint at the customers: a house named for a sleepy animal expects its guests to become sleepy animals.

The second is the object under a spotlight: one concrete thing, made specific by a material or a condition. The Broken Tankard, the Hidden Key, the Silver Chalice, and the Crystal Goblet are object names. Objects invite questions, and questions invite scenes. Why is the tankard broken, and why is it still on the sign? What does the hidden key open? An object name promises that the object exists somewhere in the building, and players will eventually go looking for it.

The third is the pair: two images joined by and. The Dice and Dagger promises gambling and violence in four words. The Veil and Vine pairs concealment with growth and drink. Pairs suit houses with two trades, two owners, or two reputations, one for the day and one for the night.

The fourth is the person, present or implied: the Hooded Stranger, the Cloaked Figure, the Stumbling Sailor, the Brawling Bard. Person names turn the sign into a character sketch and practically demand that the person, or someone claiming to be them, appears in the common room before the night ends.

The fifth is the place inside the place: the Secret Stair, the Locked Library, the Misty Crossroads, the Storyteller Seat. These names advertise a feature and flatter the party’s curiosity. Nobody hears about a tavern with a locked library and then orders soup and goes to bed.

Across all five recipes, the same supporting choices recur. Materials signal money: gold, silver, crystal, ivory, marble, and velvet belong to the grand set, while wool, wood, porridge, and kettles belong to the cozy one. Weather and light signal mood: fog, mist, starlessness, and pale lanterns belong to mystery, while hearths, quilts, and warm slippers belong to comfort. Sound words signal energy: roaring, shouting, clashing, thumping, and laughing all live in the rowdy set. Wealth, mood, and noise tell you which set a new name belongs to.

Coin Your Own Tavern Name

Start with the building, not the words. Decide four facts first: where the tavern stands, who owns it, who drinks there, and what it wants to be known for. A harbor tavern owned by a retired sailor, drunk in by dock crews, and proud of never closing during storms will name itself almost automatically once you hold those facts together. If the party later sails from that harbor, the same habit scales up: the fantasy ship names in our companion list follow the same picture first logic, because a ship, like a tavern, is identified by a painted image and a name spoken across a noisy dock.

Next, pick a recipe from the patterns above and draft three candidates, not one: comparison exposes the weak word in each. Test every candidate four ways. The sign test: can it be painted as one clear picture? The shout test: can a drunk regular yell it across a market square and be understood? The shortening test: locals shorten every name, so check what yours becomes; the Golden Griffin will be the Griffin within a week, and the Veiled Lantern will be the Veil, and both shortenings should still sound good. The story test: does the name contain a question somebody in the room can answer, wrongly, at length?

Then write the name into the world physically: on the sign, in the mouth of the stable hand giving directions, and on the bill. A name the world uses is a name the players keep.

Avoid two common failures. The first is the name that is only a joke: a pun earns one laugh and then taxes every serious scene set in the building for the rest of the campaign. Save pure jokes for one night stops. The second is the name with no picture and no story, a string of grand abstractions. If the sign painter cannot paint it and the landlord cannot explain it, cut it and draft again.

Matching the Name to the Settlement and the Campaign

A tavern name should agree with its settlement in scale and argue with it in tone. A village of two hundred people supports one cozy or rowdy house, named for local things: orchards, badgers, kettles, the landlord’s dog. A grand name in that village is a deliberate absurdity, and a good game master plays it as one, with the locals faintly embarrassed and the landlord entirely unembarrassed. A capital supports the full range, and naming its taverns is really mapping its districts: grand near the palace, mysterious near the old wall, rowdy at the docks, cozy in the streets where people actually live.

Settlement naming and tavern naming are the same craft at different sizes, which is why the birdfolk settlements in our aarakocra village names list use the same picture first, shorten well, carry a story method. Decide what a place is proud of and what it is hiding, and let the names split along that line: public names say the proud thing, and the tavern down the alley says the other one.

Culture and era bend names in predictable directions. A mining town names its taverns for tools, luck, collapses survived, and the company it hates. A pilgrim road names them for saints, relics, rest, and the distance still to go. A university town names them for books, arguments, and borrowed glory. A frontier town names them for weather, weapons, and the first settler to do everything. These are new raw material fed through the same five patterns. When the party crosses into a new culture, changing the taverns’ naming habits is one of the cheapest ways to make the border feel real.

Era matters just as much. In a young settlement, names are practical and personal, often just the owner’s name or trade. In an old city, names are inherited, corrupted, and defended by people who no longer know what they mean, exactly as Britannica describes happening to real pub names over the centuries. If your campaign spans years, let a beloved tavern’s name drift once: repainted, rehung, and one word different, it tells the returning party that time has passed.

Running a Tavern Scene Players Remember

A name earns its keep in the scene that follows it. Build the scene in layers, and let the name choose the layers. Start with the senses the name predicts: the Broken Tankard should sound of crockery and argument and smell of spilled ale, while the Veiled Lantern should be dim, close, and quiet enough to hear a chair move. One sentence of matched sensory detail does more than a paragraph of generic description, because it confirms the sign over the door was telling the truth.

Add one regular who belongs to the name. Every lasting fictional tavern has a person the party can picture without notes: the retired executioner in the corner, the widow who has outlived three landlords, the bard who is only ever almost famous. If your mysterious tavern keeps a water spirit in its well or its fountain, names from our undine names list will give her the right register, half name and half weather report. Give your regular one want, one secret, and one thing they will do for the party for free, once. Three facts fit on an index card, and that is a complete character for tavern purposes.

Give the house one rule, and enforce it in front of the players. No weapons past the blue door. Debts are sung, not spoken. The landlord’s cat may not be moved, by anyone, for any reason. A rule turns a backdrop into a place with a culture, and the moment an outsider breaks it, the whole room’s reaction teaches the party how the town works faster than any exposition. House rules also hand the players a tool: clever parties use the hospitality customs of the house within a session or two, and that is a sign the tavern has become real to them.

Finally, let the tavern change because the party was there. The table they broke gets repaired and kept broken looking, as a memorial. Their song enters the rotation, badly. The landlord names a stew after the worst thing they ever said in the building. A tavern that remembers the party becomes the campaign’s home address, and players will cross a continent of your careful plotting to get back to it: the name on the sign becomes the word the party gives directions by.

Using These Names Beyond the Table

The same 100 names work anywhere a fictional drinking house needs a sign. Novelists can use the table as a first draft filter: pick three candidates for the inn in chapter two, and keep the one whose unanswered question best matches the chapter’s business. Game and quest designers can use the four sets as district templates, assigning one mood per neighborhood so that navigation teaches geography. Teachers and quiz hosts can use the roll itself as a warm up: roll a name, and have the room invent the landlord, the house rule, and the reason for the name in one minute each.

One caution applies everywhere. Before using any name commercially, on a real business, a published game, or a product, run a quick search to check that no existing business or work in your market is already using it. Common images combine in common ways, and two creators can arrive at the same boar independently.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I use a d100 tavern names table? Roll a 100 sided die, or roll two ten sided dice and read one as the tens digit and the other as the ones digit, with double zero read as 100. Find the number and take the name. Or skip the dice and pick by mood: cozy are 1 to 25, rowdy are 26 to 50, mysterious are 51 to 75, and grand are 76 to 100.

Are these tavern names original? Yes. All 100 names were written for the source list this article adapts, and they are offered for use in your own games and stories. Because they are built from common images using common patterns, a similar name may exist somewhere independently, which is why a quick search is sensible before any commercial use.

Can I use these names outside tabletop games? Yes. They suit novels, short stories, video game inns, pub quizzes, classroom writing exercises, and any other fictional drinking house. The four mood sets make them easy to filter: cozy for warmth, rowdy for trouble, mysterious for secrets, and grand for ceremony.

What is the difference between a tavern and an inn? In medieval Britain the words described different businesses: inns were purpose built to lodge travelers, with bedrooms and stabling, taverns sold wine to richer town patrons, and alehouses were householders selling home brewed ale. In most games the distinction is now a tone choice: use inn when beds are the point, tavern when drinking and company are the point, and alehouse for the smallest establishments.

How do I make a tavern name sound old rather than invented yesterday? Build it from one paintable picture, keep it short, and give it a history inside the world. Decide what the sign shows, what the locals shorten the name to, and what the landlord claims it means, then let those three disagree slightly. Real pub names were often corrupted over centuries, and a little of that wear makes a fictional name feel inherited instead of designed.

Should I roll for a name or choose one? Roll when the party goes somewhere you did not prepare, or when a mismatch between name and place would make a good story. Choose when the tavern is a major location, a home base, or the setting for a planned meeting, because those scenes deserve a name picked for the job. Many game masters roll three times and pick from the three, which keeps the surprise and keeps a veto.

Sources & references

• Encyclopaedia Britannica, Tavern. Material read: a tavern is an establishment where alcoholic beverages are sold for consumption on the premises; tavern keeping has paralleled the growth of trade, travel, and industry throughout history and virtually worldwide; Roman establishments included the caupona and taberna meritoria, which served cooked food and full meals; English alehouses were followed by the inns of the Middle Ages, described as sanctuaries of wayfaring strangers; and by the 16th century some better taverns had become regular meeting places and unofficial clubhouses. Read first hand on 3 November 2026.
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, Public House. Material read: English common law imposed social responsibilities on inns and taverns as public houses that must receive travelers willing to pay for food, drink, and lodging; the early inns and taverns were identified by simple signs such as lions, dolphins, or black swans; many colorful pub names are corrupted forms of historical, ecclesiastical, or other proper phrases and titles; and in the 18th century the word Arms was appended to many pub names, indicating the protection of a noble family or referring to the ownership of the land. Read first hand on 3 November 2026.
• Building History, Researching the History of Pubs, Inns and Hotels in Britain. Material read: in the medieval period alehouses were ordinary dwellings where the householder served home brewed ale and beer; inns were generally purpose built to accommodate travelers, needing more bedrooms than the average house and substantial stabling, with some of the earliest great inns built by monasteries in centers of pilgrimage; taverns sold wine, catered to richer patrons, and were restricted to towns and hugely outnumbered by alehouses; inns, taverns, and alehouses advertised with a hanging sign, a pole garlanded with foliage signified an alehouse, and from the 14th century inns and taverns hung out a pictorial sign by which they could be identified in that illiterate age. Read first hand on 3 November 2026.