Ever asked yourself, what’s my dinosaur name?

Well, thanks to our fun dino name generator, you are about to find out.

Imagine that you stumble (quite literally) into a top secret science experiment. First you crash into a test tube of dinosaur DNA, then you fall headfirst into a time-machine. With a flash and a bang, you are transported back 100 million years time. You look down to see that you have turned into a monstrous prehistoric reptile.

Reveal your terrifyingly cool dino name, use our funny dinosaur name generator:

Aaargh!

And here’s how we did it!

A fake dinosaur name is easy to create. A scientific dinosaur name is harder. But a made up dinosaur name that will convince a palaeontologist while making them laugh… well, that’s tricky!

Let’s find out how the magic was done.

Step 1: Grab the authentic Greek and Latin word bits

Palaeontologists build dinosaur names using small word pieces that come from Greek or Latin.

As an example, consider the dino hall-of-famer Triceratops.

Let’s break it down:

TRI = Latin for three
CERAT = Greek for horn
OPS = Greek meaning that the face gives the name

And put together we get:

Triceratops = Dinosaur with three horns on its face

And so, while it may appear super clever and scientific, dinosaur names are really just a word-salad of Greek and Latin word chunks!

Don’t go thinking it’s random, though! The word salad must follow the “International Code of Zoological Nomenclature” recipe book. It’s pretty strict and tells scientists exactly what they can and can’t do when naming newly discovered living or extinct organisms.

Here are some other common roots (aka word bits) found in dinosaur names:

• allo strange
• bronto thunder
• dino terrible
• echino spiked
• elasmo plated
• mega huge
• micro small
• ornitho bird
• raptor robber
• rex king
• saurus lizard
• stego roof
• tri three
• tyranno tyrant

We dumped a ton of these roots into a database ready to be mixed and matched by our “highly sophisticated” name generator.

Step 2: Get creative with comical adjectives

The next thing our generator needed was a list of carefully chosen adjectives that would pair comically with your new dinosaur name.

No rocket science here, but if you aren’t feeling creative, then here’s a chucklesome list of funny adjectives.

Step 3: Concoct a top secret algorithm

Our name generator is based on a top secret javascript-based algorithm. We’d love to tell you how it works, but if we did, then we’d have to extinct you.

Obviously, you are much better off alive, so instead of revealing our code we’ve created this super-scientific diagram to show you what our algorithm does:

We’re still waiting for our letter from the Nobel Prize committee. We’ll let you know if we are nominated for ‘biggest contribution to palaeontology’.

In the meantime, we hope you are happy with your shiny new name!

Go forth and demand that your parents, siblings, or partner call you by it from now on.