Science fiction
Sci-fi name generator
Four naming registers for space opera, hard SF, and everything between: core-world colonists, station-born spacers, non-human species, and synthetics who picked their own names once nobody was checking.
The four registers
Colonial & Core Worlds
Recognisably human names, drifted a few centuries out of true.
Spacers & Belters
Call-signs and crew names from people born off a gravity well.
Xeno & Non-Human
Names built from sounds a human throat has to approximate.
Synthetics & AI
Designations, and the names they picked once nobody was listening.
Why sci-fi names are harder than fantasy names
Fantasy naming has centuries of convention behind it: a reader knows what an elf should sound like before they read a word. Science fiction has no such agreement, and the failure modes are specific. Names that are too futuristic read as parody. Names that are too contemporary make the setting feel like next Tuesday. The trick is drift, not invention.
Human names should have moved, not mutated
Four hundred years from now people will still be named after grandparents. What changes is which grandparents: names migrate, blend across languages, and lose or gain sounds. A colonial roster that mixes Okonkwo, Lindqvist, Nakamura, and Vasquez says more about the setting's history than any amount of invented orthography.
Spacers name themselves after the job
People born off a gravity well, in the genre's long tradition, tend to carry working names rather than family ones: call-signs, nicknames, and trade slang that stuck. Keel, Torque, and Nullgrav are functional the way sailor nicknames were functional. The give-away that a writer has thought about it is when the name implies a job you can picture.
Alien names have to be sayable
A non-human name needs to signal a throat shaped differently from yours while still being pronounceable by the reader. Consonant clusters that English does not use are the workhorse here. Where you want real strangeness, put it in the second name: a clade, a brood, or a migration is more alien than any amount of punctuation in the first name.
Synthetics name themselves last
The most reliable trick with AI characters is the gap between designation and chosen name. A ship's system called Unit 7 that has started answering to Patience is telling you something the plot has not said yet. Names like Errata, Nullspace, and No Longer Under Warranty carry an attitude that a serial number cannot.
For fantasy settings, try the fantasy name generator. For tabletop specifically, see the D&D generator.