This galaxy name generator makes up a galaxy for a story or a star map: an invented name such as Velamund or a label such as QXV 961, a real kind of galaxy and a note for the chart.
Read the full guide
Name the galaxy, then pick its kind
Press New galaxy name. Keep one part and press again to change the rest. Names come in two styles: invented words, and labels of three letters and a number, in the way sky surveys list galaxies. The letters here belong to no real survey we could find.
The kinds are real
Every kind in the list below is a real class of galaxy. A barred spiral has a bar-shaped band of stars across its core, as the Milky Way has. A ring galaxy is a ring of stars around a bare core. Most galaxies are dwarf galaxies.
Questions and answers
What are the main types of galaxies?
Galaxies come in three main types: ellipticals, spirals and irregulars. The Hubble sequence adds lenticular galaxies, placed between the ellipticals and the spirals, and splits the spirals into barred and unbarred.
What kind of galaxy is the Milky Way?
The Milky Way is a large, disk-shaped barred spiral galaxy: a spiral with a bar-shaped band of stars that extends to either side of its core.
How are real galaxies named?
Only a few galaxies have well-established names, such as the Andromeda Galaxy and the Whirlpool Galaxy. For the rest, astronomers work with numbers from catalogs, such as the Messier catalog.
Are these real galaxies?
No. Every name and label is made up, and each was searched on Wikipedia, which lists the named galaxies and the catalogs, and dropped on a match. The kinds of galaxy are real.
How this list was compiled: Our own list of 109 names in two groups, made by script on 2026-10-03: 79 invented names, each an opening and an ending of our own, chosen by hand, and 30 labels of three letters and a number, in the way sky surveys list galaxies. Screened by script that day against the page titles and full text of English Wikipedia, which holds its lists of galaxies and the names of real catalogs (https://en.wikipedia.org/, CC BY-SA 4.0), an English dictionary, GeoNames places of 500 people and up (https://download.geonames.org/export/dump/, CC BY 4.0), every list on this site, the names its planet page can spell, a rude-word list read across the join, and the page titles of fan wikis of games, books and shows. 9 invented candidates were cut, among them Selistra, Aenarion, Lysianthe, Calamaris, Orithea. One more name was taken out on 2026-10-05 because a game uses it for a character. The letter groups were chosen because a search of Wikipedia found no catalog that uses them. No list is complete, so search a name before you publish it. Licence: own work
Kind of galaxy: all 14 kinds
B 1
barred spiral galaxyA spiral with a bar-shaped band of stars that extends to either side of the core. The Milky Way is one.
D 1
dwarf galaxyA small galaxy, about one hundredth the size of the Milky Way, with only a few billion stars. Most galaxies are dwarf galaxies.
E 1
elliptical galaxyA galaxy with an ellipsoidal profile and little structure, rated from E0, nearly spherical, to E7, highly elongated.
Show all 14 kinds (11 more)
F 1
flocculent spiral galaxyA spiral whose arms are poorly defined.
G 1
grand design spiral galaxyA spiral with prominent and well-defined arms.
I 1
irregular galaxyA galaxy that cannot be readily classified as elliptical or spiral. The Magellanic Clouds are nearby examples.
L 1
lenticular galaxyAn intermediate form with properties of both elliptical and spiral galaxies: Hubble type S0.
R 2
radio galaxyA galaxy with giant regions of radio emission extending well beyond its visible structure.
ring galaxyA ring of stars and interstellar medium around a bare core, thought to form when a smaller galaxy passes through the core of a spiral.
S 4
shell galaxyAn elliptical galaxy whose halo stars are arranged in concentric shells. NGC 3923 has over 20 shells.
spiral galaxyA rotating disk of stars with a central bulge of generally older stars and relatively bright arms extending outward from it.
starburst galaxyA galaxy that forms stars at an exceptional rate. M82 is the prototype, after a close encounter with the larger M81.
supergiant elliptical galaxyA type-cD galaxy: the largest and most luminous galaxies known, with a faint halo of stars.
U 1
ultra diffuse galaxyAn extremely faint galaxy. It may be the same size as the Milky Way with only one percent of its visible stars.
How this list was compiled: 14 real kinds of galaxy. Each line follows English Wikipedia's article Galaxy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy, read on 2026-10-03, CC BY-SA 4.0); a script checked the words behind each line. Licence: own selection; the lines follow English Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Note: all 50 notes
A 1
A favorite of stargazers with small telescopes
B 1
The brightest member of a small group
C 2
Cataloged on the last clear night of a rainy season
Counted as two galaxies until better lenses came
E 1
Every pilot school uses it as a first exercise in navigation
F 3
First logged as a smudge on a glass plate
The first thing a new telescope was pointed at
Found by a student checking somebody else's sums
Show all 50 notes (42 more)
H 2
Half hidden behind the dust of a nearer one
Home to a star catalog nobody has finished
I 22
It appears on the oldest hand-drawn chart in the archive
It drifts toward its nearest neighbor a little each age
It is slowly swallowing a smaller neighbor
It is the farthest thing its discoverers ever measured
It lies in a part of the sky with no bright stars
It rises late and sets early from the northern lands
It sits alone in a patch of empty sky
It sits beside a brighter rival and is often skipped
It trails stars pulled loose by a passing neighbor
It was found by accident during a search for something else
It was mistaken for a comet for forty years
It was named for the survey ship that mapped it
It was the last entry in its discoverer's notebook
Its center is hidden from every telescope so far
Its core outshines everything around it
Its discoverer wanted a different name and lost the argument
Its distance was revised three times in one decade
Its far side has never been charted
Its light left before the first map was drawn
Its light takes longer to arrive than was first thought
Its name was chosen by a vote of schoolchildren
Its outer edge fades so slowly nobody agrees where it stops
L 3
Listed twice by two surveys that never compared notes
Long exposures give its glow a faint green tint
Lost for a century, then found again one degree away
N 3
Named by a night-shift astronomer who never said why
No probe sent there has reported back yet
No two counts of its stars have ever agreed
O 3
Old sky charts mark it only with a small cross
The old songs put a lighthouse at its center
One of its stars blew apart within living memory
P 1
Photographed more often than any of its neighbors
S 5
Seen face-on, like a coin on a table
Seen nearly edge-on from here
Seen through a gap in the dust of our own sky
Settlers call it by a shorter name
Surveys keep finding small companions around it
T 3
Too faint to see without a long exposure
Twin to another of the same size, a short hop away
Two observatories still argue over who saw it first
How this list was compiled: Our own list of 50 made-up notes, written on 2026-10-03 so that each fits every kind of galaxy in the list. None describes a real galaxy. Checked by script against every list on this site for repeats. Licence: own work