Random Fictional Character Generator From Books, Plays and Legends

How this list was compiled: Membership is by rule, never by taste. A character is on the list when three things hold, read on 2026-09-30 and 2026-10-01 from English Wikipedia through its API: (1) the character has an article of its own in one of Wikipedia's categories for characters of literature, theatre, epic and legend (the yearly categories Literary characters introduced in and Theatre characters introduced in, Fictional characters introduced in the 12th to 18th centuries, Male and Female characters in literature, Male and Female Shakespearean characters, Characters in children's literature, in novels, in plays, in poems, in short stories, in epic poems, in fantasy literature, in the Iliad and in the Odyssey, Arthurian characters and fairy tale characters; 353 categories, 3,682 articles); (2) on the day it was read that article also existed in at least 14 other language editions of Wikipedia, which is how the list finds the characters known around the world without anyone choosing them; (3) the character first appeared in a book, a play, a poem, an epic, a legend or a folk tale. That left 371 articles after the exclusions below, and at most five characters are kept from one author, or from one tradition where there is no author (Greek myth, Arthurian legend), taking those found in the most languages first; the cap removed 151. Four further articles were set aside while the lines were written: one was about a cycle of fables and not a character, one first appeared on the radio, one is described by its article as a film character, and one could not be placed in a book from its article. The list holds 216 characters: 128 from novels and stories, 49 from children's books, 9 from plays and 30 from myths, legends and folk tales. Left out on purpose: titles that redirect to a book or a film and so have no article of their own; gods and figures worshipped in a living religion; real or possibly real people; kinds of creature, groups, stock types and national personifications (dragon, elf, Harlequin, Uncle Sam); characters who first appeared on screen, on the radio or in comics, who have their own pages on this site; articles that are about a book and not a character; eleven characters who are serial killers or come from horror and crime thrillers written for adults; and five whose portrayal is widely described as an ethnic caricature. For each character, the work it first appeared in, the author and the year come from the character's own article and were checked against the article of the work where the work has one (nine short stories and early books have none, and their facts rest on the character's article alone). The year is the year of first publication or first performance; a play by Shakespeare carries the decade its article gives, and a legend carries its tradition and no author. The line on who the character is was written for this site from the opening of the character's article, and every name and number in it was checked against that article by script; nothing is copied. The lines stay clean even where the book is not. Names of characters and titles of works are given as facts; the characters belong to their authors, estates and publishers, and this site is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them. Review interval 12 months: the language counts move, so the list is read again each year. Licence: own work