Random Newspaper Generator

What this list is

These are newspapers, and their names, which we read a thousand times without ever thinking about, turn out to be a hidden language. Why is one paper a Times and another a Herald, a Tribune, a Post, a Gazette? None of these words is random. Each was chosen to say something, and once you learn what they mean, every masthead starts telling you its own small story.

Press Generate and it hands you one. A few from the list:

• The New York Times
• The Washington Post
• Chicago Tribune
• The Wall Street Journal
• Los Angeles Times
• The Miami Herald
• The Hindustan Times
• New York Post

Look at those names as words rather than brands. A journal, a post, a tribune, a herald. Each of those was once an ordinary word with a specific meaning, and each was chosen by a newspaper to signal something about what it does. This page is about the surprisingly rich system behind newspaper names.

Drawing a paper

1. Press Generate for one paper.
2. Ask for a few to compare or to name something of your own.
3. Type into Contains to search by name.
4. Copy to keep them.

Where these come from

Newspapers gathered and checked by hand from around the world. The tool picks from that pool in your browser.

The formula hiding in every masthead

Almost every newspaper name follows the same underlying formula: a place, plus a word describing what the paper does. The place tells you who the paper serves and where; the second word tells you how the paper thinks of itself. A city or region, followed by a term for the reporting of news, and you have the great majority of newspaper names ever printed.

The geographical part is straightforward and nearly universal, because a newspaper is rooted in a place and its readers. Sometimes the place is the whole name, a single word naming the region and nothing more. But usually the place is paired with a descriptor, and it is the descriptors that carry the interesting meaning, because there are only so many of them and each belongs to a family of related words with a shared idea behind it.

Remarkably, a small number of these descriptors account for a huge share of all newspapers. Just a handful of words, the same ones appearing over and over, name the majority of papers, which is why newspaper names feel so familiar and so interchangeable: they are drawn from a small, shared vocabulary. The words are not chosen at random from the dictionary; they are picked from a traditional set, each with an established meaning in the world of the press, passed down and reused across countless titles. Learn what that small set of words means, and you can read almost any masthead.

The names that come from the town crier

The richest family of newspaper names reaches back to a time before newspapers, to the ways news was spread when most people could not read: by voice, by messengers and criers calling out announcements in public places. Many of the most common newspaper words are simply the names of those old bringers of news.

Consider a herald. In the age of knights and tournaments, a herald was the official who called out announcements, who proclaimed the news aloud to the assembled crowd. A tribune, in one of its senses, was a platform from which a speaker addressed the people, a place from which news and argument were delivered to the public. A courier was a messenger who carried news from place to place. A mercury took its name from the Roman messenger of the gods, the divine bringer of tidings. Each of these words names a way that news travelled before print, and each was adopted by newspapers presenting themselves as the modern inheritors of that role: the ones who now proclaim the news to the public, as the crier and the messenger once did.

Even the very common word post belongs to this world, evoking the postal system, the network of riders and stations that carried messages across distances. A paper called a post presents itself as part of that machinery of delivery, bringing dispatches to its readers. And words like dispatch and mail carry the same sense of news conveyed, sent, delivered from where it happened to where it is read.

So a great many newspaper names are, in effect, a claim to an ancient function. By calling itself a herald or a courier or a post, a paper says: we are the ones who bring you the news, the descendants of every messenger and crier who ever carried word to the people. The names preserve, in fossil form, the whole history of how news reached us before ink and paper, a history most readers pass over without noticing every time they glance at the top of the page.

The papers named after coins

Two of the odder newspaper words have a surprising shared origin: they are named after small coins, specifically the small coin you once paid to buy the paper.

The word gazette, a very common newspaper name, traces back through French to an Italian word for a small copper coin. In the Venice of centuries ago, a news-sheet cost one of these little coins, and the name of the coin attached itself to the news-sheet, and then to newspapers generally, so that a great many papers are named, at one remove, after the pocket change that once bought them. Similarly, one famous American paper carries a word derived from the name of a small Spanish coin of little value, again the trivial sum that a copy once cost.

There is something quietly charming in this. A newspaper named after a coin is a newspaper wearing its own price as its name, a permanent reminder that it was, first and always, a cheap thing bought daily by ordinary people, affordable pocket-money reading. Where the herald and the tribune names reach for grandeur, the crier proclaiming to the multitude, the coin names are humble, rooting the paper in the small everyday transaction of handing over a coin for the day's news.

It is the kind of detail that changes how you see a familiar word. The word on the masthead, which looks like a grand traditional name for a serious institution, may in fact just be the name of the smallest coin in someone's pocket four centuries ago, preserved by habit long after the coin and its value were forgotten. The history of the press is full of these small fossils, meanings frozen into words we no longer examine.

A name is a statement of purpose

Beyond describing what a paper does, a name often declares what a paper stands for, and this is the final layer of the system. Newspapers use their names to position themselves, to signal their character and their promise to readers.

Some names claim a mission of vigilance and advocacy, presenting the paper as a watchful guardian working on the readers' behalf: words suggesting a sentinel keeping watch, an advocate taking the readers' side, an examiner or enquirer digging for truth. Others reach for the imagery of light against darkness, names evoking a sun, a star, a beacon, casting the paper as a source of illumination, dispelling the darkness of ignorance with the light of information. Others take their names from nature or from lofty abstractions, and some, more pointedly, carry the mark of old political allegiances, words that once signalled which side of a political divide the paper stood on.

In every case, the name is doing more than labelling; it is making a promise and staking a position. A paper that calls itself a guardian or an advocate promises to protect and champion its readers. A paper that calls itself a beacon or a sun promises to enlighten them. The choice of word is a compressed statement of the paper's self-image and its pitch to the public, a claim about what kind of institution it intends to be, delivered in a single traditional word at the top of every page.

So the next time you read a masthead, read it as the small argument it is. The place tells you whom the paper serves. The descriptor tells you how it sees its work: as a crier proclaiming the news, a messenger delivering it, a guardian protecting its readers, a light dispelling their ignorance, or simply a cheap sheet bought for a coin. All of that history and self-definition sits in two or three words we usually never think about, and every newspaper on this list is quietly announcing, in its name, exactly what it means to be.

Questions people ask

Why do newspapers have such similar names?

Because nearly all follow the same formula, a place plus a descriptor drawn from a small, traditional set of words, and just a handful of those descriptors name the majority of papers. The shared vocabulary is why mastheads feel so familiar and interchangeable: they are built from the same limited stock of terms.

What do words like Herald and Tribune actually mean?

They reach back to how news spread before print. A herald was the official who proclaimed announcements aloud, a tribune was a platform for addressing the public, a courier a messenger. Papers adopted these words to present themselves as the modern inheritors of those roles, the ones who now bring news to the people.

Why are some papers named after coins?

Because the coin was once the price of the paper. Gazette derives from the name of a small Italian coin that bought a news-sheet in old Venice, and another common word comes from a small Spanish coin. Such papers effectively wear their own modest price as their name, long after the coin was forgotten.

Do newspaper names mean anything beyond describing the news?

Often, yes. Many names stake a position: words suggesting a guardian or advocate promise to champion readers, while names evoking a sun, star or beacon promise to enlighten them. The name is a compressed statement of the paper's self-image and its promise to the public.

References

1. Merriam-Webster, on the meanings and origins of common newspaper words like tribune, herald, gazette and mercury. https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/gazette-and-other-words-for-newspapers
2. OUPblog, on the geographical-plus-descriptor structure of newspaper names and how papers position themselves. https://blog.oup.com/2018/12/secrets-of-newspaper-names/