Name generator
He doesn’t arrive
on his own.
An elf is the helper in Britain and North America. In the Netherlands it is a Piet, in Czechia a devil arguing with an angel, in Sweden a small bad-tempered tomte who lives in the barn. Pick a tradition and name one.
Looking for a Christmas elf name or an Elf on the Shelf name? Try the elf name generator.
Pieten are named for what they do — the one who knows the roofs, the one who carries the book, the one who never stops handing out kruidnoten.
The tradition this comes fromPress the button.
Why the helper changes
The companion tells you what the tradition is for. Where the gift-bringer is a saint, the companion is there to judge — the Czech čert exists to be talked out of taking the child away, and the angel exists to talk him out of it. Where the figure is a household spirit, as in Sweden and Norway, the helper is the household spirit himself, and the transaction is porridge.
The workshop elf is the newest of them and the odd one out. He has no moral function at all: he is an employee, invented largely in nineteenth-century America to explain where the presents are made.
Who arrives in your country