Animal Crossing: New Horizons is out now, and fans of the franchise are finally getting to dive into all it has to offer. However, as with most games, the hardest decisions take place early on, while everything is really still just getting set up. Gamers are known to spend hours perfectly designing their character in a character creator, but Animal Crossing: New Horizons presents a challenge early on that no one prepared for: what to name the island.
Clearly, it's a big decision, as not only will the player who chose the island be living there, but there's a limit of 1 island to each Switch system. The inability to decide is further crippled by this fact, and some may find 10 characters extremely limiting as well. The Animal Crossing: New Horizons villagers will offer up ideas, but they may not capture the exact spirit of the player. Regardless, here's a few hints and resources to come up with the perfect name for the island.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons Island Name Ideas
Perhaps one of the simplest methods is to do a little brainstorming in regards to video games; after all, that's one thing everyone playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons has in common. This will occasionally have to be tweaked, however, due to the character limits. For example, Far Cry 3 fans could change "Rook Island" into "Rook Isle," whereas Pokemon fans could take inspiration from the upcoming DLC and name it "Armor Isle" in honor of it (Sun and Moon have potential island names as well). A lot of big franchises have plenty of names that could and should be rightfully used to inspire island names, such as Dungeons & Dragons, Assassin's Creed (Masyaf?), and more.
Of course, real-world inspiration is likely a good source as well. Looking at tropical island names, tropical species, and tropical plants could provide plenty of material to use, such as the tropical hardwood Teak for "Teak Island," the Okapi (think Zebra giraffe) for a island-sounding name, or tropical plants like "Alocasia" from the Amazon Elephant Ears plant. Indeed, the most interesting AC: NH island names can most likely be derived by looking at personal passions, whether that's video games, locations, plants, or even far more.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons Island Name Generators
Those who still find themselves brainstorming but coming up blank can find some online resources to help as well. The Animal Crossing: New Horizons community has already come up with a couple of name generators to help pinpoint some names; for now, this seems to be the best and more reliable, adhering to the character limit of the game.
- Animal Crossing New Horizons Island Name Generator - Gravesounds
Either way, Animal Crossing: New Horizon fans should think carefully and choose a name they like. It cannot be changed later on, and considering everything there is to do, such as finding Gulliver's Communicator parts, fans will ant to be sure they are happy with their name. They don't want to look back at it in a couple of weeks like its an old gamertag chosen by the 12-year-old self, after all.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is out now, exclusively for the Nintendo Switch.
