Detective Agency Name Generator
Generates a fictional private-investigation agency name — 'Marlowe & Cross Investigations' — for noir or mystery fiction and worldbuilding.
What this generator does
Names a fictional private-investigation agency, in the two registers the genre actually uses: the surname-and-partner form that sounds like a real firm, and the ironic single-word form that signals the story is not taking itself seriously. Which one you want tells the reader what kind of book they are in.
What it builds, and how many ways
Each result is assembled to this shape: [name] + [name2] — one of 2 sentence patterns this generator uses.
- name: 10 options
- name2: 10 options
Taken together those banks can be assembled 110 different ways, repeating after about 13.
Some results it can produce:
- Marlowe & Blackwood Investigations
- Kane Private Investigations
- Marlowe & Hartley Investigations
- Marlowe & Doyle Investigations
A fixed sample so this page stays the same between visits. Your own results are assembled at random, each slot filled independently and each press independent of the last, so the same result can come up twice — past the repeat figure above, seeing one twice is more likely than not.
How to use this tool
- Press generate for a name.
- Generate again for a different one.
Common use cases
- Mystery and noir fiction settings
- Tabletop RPG NPC business naming
- Writing prompts for detective fiction
Practical tips
- The surname form implies a founder and often a dead or departed partner, which is a free piece of backstory sitting in the name.
Each part of the result is chosen independently with your browser's cryptographic random number generator, so every option in a bank is equally likely. How Generate Random works.