Fantasy Desert Names

One press names a desert with a real word for desert country and says what kind of desert it is.

Fantasy Desert Names: 20 deserts

The Last Yardangs, a semi-desert

Padlock: keep a part. Arrows: change only that part.

  • First wordLast
  • Desert wordYardangs
  • Kind of desertsemi-desert
Saved
History (0)

Every desert you make is kept here, newest first, up to the last 20. The list stays in this browser.

    Desert of the day

     

    1. The Ash Badlands, a hot desert
    2. The Umber Sand Sheet, a temperate desert
    3. The Alabaster Reg, a rain shadow desert
    4. The Bitter Erg, a semi-desert
    5. The Patient Sand Sheet, a mid-latitude desert
    6. The Mirage Gibber, a monsoon desert
    7. The Cloudless Takyr, a mid-latitude desert
    8. The Unmapped Bolson, a trade wind desert
    9. The Throneless Gibber, a coastal desert
    10. The Rust Salt Pans, a montane desert
    11. The Rust Playa, a monsoon desert
    12. The Howling Reg, a monsoon desert
    13. The Salted Reg, a semi-desert
    14. The Last Dunes, a semi-desert
    15. The Sighing Chott, a coastal desert
    16. The Endless Hamada, a fog desert
    17. The Moaning Takyr, a fog desert
    18. The Lonely Hamada, a monsoon desert
    19. The Unmapped Barchans, a monsoon desert
    20. The Rainless Yardangs, a hot desert

    Next step Name the range that borders itName the river that crosses it

    How it works

    This desert name generator makes fantasy desert names in the form The Amber Erg: a first word of ours, a real word for desert country, such as erg, reg or hamada, and a real kind of desert.

    Read the full guide

    Name the desert on your map

    Press New desert name. Tap a part to lock it, then press again. Lock the desert word to name the wastes of one region, one erg after another.

    What the desert words mean

    An erg is a sand sea, a broad area of wind-swept sand. A hamada is a landscape of high, barren, rocky plateaus. A playa is a dry lake bed. The list under the tool explains each word and each kind of desert, such as a fog desert, where fog drip supplies most of the moisture.

    Tips
    • The desert word and the kind are dealt separately; check that they suit each other before you ink the map.

    Questions and answers

    What is a good name for a fantasy desert?

    A describing word and a word for the land itself, such as The Amber Erg or The Whispering Hamada. A real desert word tells the reader what the ground is like.

    What are the kinds of desert?

    By place and weather, deserts are classed as trade wind, mid-latitude, rain shadow, coastal, monsoon or polar deserts. The Sahara is a trade wind desert.

    What is the difference between an erg and a reg?

    An erg is a sea of sand. A reg is desert pavement, a surface of closely packed rock fragments; reg is its name in the western Sahara.

    Are these deserts real?

    No. Each name was searched as a Wikipedia title and in Wikipedia's lists of deserts, and matches were cut. The desert words and the kinds of desert are real.

    More tools

    Browse Entertainment

    First word: all 68 first words

    Color 18

    • Alabaster
    • Amber
    • Ash
    • Bronze
    • Chalk
    • Cinder
    • Copper
    • Golden
    • Honey
    • Ivory
    • Pale
    • Russet
    • Rust
    • Saffron
    • Scarlet
    • Tawny
    • Umber
    • Vermilion

    Wind 12

    • Drifting
    • Gale-Swept
    • Hissing
    • Howling
    • Moaning
    • Restless
    • Roaring
    • Sighing
    • Wandering
    • Whispering
    • Whistling
    • Windless

    Dryness and heat 15

    • Bitter
    • Blistered
    • Brackish
    • Cloudless
    • Cracked
    • Dustbound
    • Mirage
    • Parched
    • Rainless
    • Salted
    • Scorched
    • Shadeless
    • Sunstruck
    • Thirsting
    • Waterless

    Age, silence and lost kings 23

    • Buried
    • Crownless
    • Empty
    • Endless
    • Forgotten
    • Hollow
    • Kingless
    • Last
    • Lonely
    • Long
    • Lost
    • Moonless
    • Nameless
    • Noonday
    • Patient
    • Silent
    • Sleeping
    • Starlit
    • Sunken
    • Throneless
    • Trackless
    • Uncounted
    • Unmapped
    How this list was compiled

    Our own list of 68 first words, written on 2026-10-02. Every name the first two rows can spell was screened by script that day: as an English Wikipedia page title, with and without "The"; against the text of the English Wikipedia pages List of deserts, List of deserts by area and List of North American deserts; against GeoNames places of 500 people and up (https://download.geonames.org/export/dump/, CC BY 4.0); and against the page titles of 16 fantasy fan wikis. The table of natural features of the United States was not read, so a name here may still be a real wash, flat or dune field. 3 candidates were cut (2 taken out on a second reading; 1 a name from published fiction, or one letter from it), among them Shifting, Glass, Farther. Search a name before you publish it. Licence: own work

    Desert word: all 16 desert words

    B 4

    • Badlands Dry terrain where softer rock and clay-rich soil have been extensively eroded.
    • Bajada A series of alluvial fans that merge along a mountain front.
    • Barchans A barchan is a crescent-shaped dune.
    • Bolson A desert valley or depression entirely surrounded by hills or mountains.

    C 1

    • Chott A salt lake in Africa's Maghreb that stays dry for much of the year.

    D 1

    • Dunes A dune is a landform of wind- or water-driven sand, typically a mound, ridge or hill.

    E 1

    • Erg An erg, or sand sea, is a broad, flat area of desert covered with wind-swept sand.

    G 1

    • Gibber Desert pavement, as it is called in Australia.

    H 1

    • Hamada A desert landscape of high, largely barren, hard rocky plateaus.

    P 1

    • Playa A dry lake bed: a basin that once held a body of standing water.

    R 1

    • Reg Desert pavement, as it is called in the western Sahara: a surface of closely packed rock fragments.

    S 3

    • Salt Pans Flat, open expanses of ground covered with salt and other minerals, usually shining white under the sun.
    • Sand Sheet Sand sheets are flat, gently undulating plots of sand.
    • Serir Desert pavement, as it is called in the eastern Sahara.

    T 1

    • Takyr A smooth, bare kind of ground in the deserts of Central Asia, similar to a salt flat.

    Y 1

    • Yardangs A yardang is a streamlined ridge carved from bedrock by wind-blown dust and sand.
    How this list was compiled

    16 real words for desert country. Each line follows the opening of the English Wikipedia article on that landform, read on 2026-10-02; a script checked that the words behind each line are in that opening. The lines are ours. Words for a watercourse or a single rock (wadi, arroyo, hoodoo) were left out, because the name here is the name of a whole desert. Nothing was cut. Licence: own work

    Kind of desert: all 10 kinds of desert

    C 1

    • coastal desert Mostly on the western edges of continents, where cold currents approach the land.

    F 1

    • fog desert Fog drip supplies most of the moisture its animals and plants need, as in the Namib Desert in Namibia.

    H 1

    • hot desert High temperatures in summer and more evaporation than precipitation.

    M 3

    • mid-latitude desert Found between 30 and 50 degrees north and south, mostly far from the sea, as the Tengger and Sonoran deserts.
    • monsoon desert Found where sea and land differ greatly in temperature. The Thar Desert is of this type.
    • montane desert An arid place at very high altitude, as in the Kunlun Mountains and on the Tibetan Plateau.

    R 1

    • rain shadow desert An area of much reduced rainfall behind mountains, on the side facing away from the prevailing winds.

    S 1

    • semi-desert A semi-arid or semi-desert climate is dry, but its rainfall is not as low as a desert's.

    T 2

    • temperate desert In the Köppen climate classification a desert is classed as hot (BWh) or temperate (BWk).
    • trade wind desert Found on either side of the horse latitudes, at 30 to 35 degrees north and south. The Sahara is of this type.
    How this list was compiled

    10 real kinds of desert. Each line follows one of four English Wikipedia articles (Desert, Rain shadow, Fog desert or Semi-arid climate), read on 2026-10-02; a script checked that the words behind each line are in the article. The lines are ours. The polar desert, an ice cap climate, was left out because many of the first words here are words of heat. Licence: own work