The name is part of the act
Every other class wears a name. A bard performs one. Many bards run a double-name system: the birth name that gets them into family dinners and the stage name that goes on the handbill. The stage name is chosen deliberately for sound, rhythm, and memorability, because a bard whose name nobody remembers is failing at the job. When you roll above, test each result by imagining a tavern keeper announcing it. If it lands flat, the bard would have rejected it too.
What a good bard name does
It moves. Bardic names favor musical rhythm, alliteration, and a little ornament: an extra syllable a fighter would have trimmed, a surname that sounds like a chord. College matters too. A College of Lore bard may keep a scholarly, serious name, while a Glamour bard's name should shimmer slightly. Epithets in this generator lean toward the performed kind, Silvertongue rather than Skullsplitter, because a bard's reputation is built in rooms rather than on battlefields.
The name behind the name
The fun is in the gap between the two names. Who knows the bard's real one? A bard who tells every audience a different birth name is hiding something. One who never uses the stage name offstage keeps the mask on a hook by the door, fully aware it is a mask. Roll until you have a pair: one name that belongs in a ballad and one that belongs on a baptism record. The story of your bard lives in the space between them.
This generator's bard flavor includes epithets like the Lyrical, the Wandering, Silvertongue, and titles like , , the. About a third of rolled names carry one; the rest stay clean. Click any result to copy it.