German witch names can be traced back to the folklore and mythology of Germany, which is rich in tales of mystical and supernatural beings. These names often evoke a sense of mystery and power, and are often associated with a deep knowledge of magic and the occult. Some popular German witch names include Hexe, which simply means "witch" in German, and is often used to refer to a female witch. This name conveys a strong and authoritative presence. Another common German witch name is Zauberin, which translates to "sorceress" or "enchantress". This name suggests a witch who has mastered the art of spellcasting and has the ability to manipulate people and events to her advantage.

German witch names

Witch Names, Enchantress Names
Names associated with witches, sorceresses, enchanters. Names that mean, witch,
enchantress, sorcerer/sorceress, bewitching, intoxicating, fascinating, seductive, etc.

1. AHTI : Another name for Finnish Lemminkäinen, the myth name of a god of magic, a sorcerer said to be able to "sing the sand into pearls."
2. ALBERICH : Variant spelling of Old High German Albirich, meaning "elf ruler." In Germanic mythology, this was the name of a sorcerer king of elves.
3. LEMMINKÄINEN : Finnish myth name of a hero of the Kalevala, a sorcerer or magician said to be able to "sing the sand into pearls." The meaning of the name is unknown but it is probably related to the name Lempi, meaning "love."
4. MAKSIM ( מַקְסִים ): Hebrew name meaning "enchanting, attractive." Compare with another form of Maksim.
5. MOHAN ( मोहन ): Hindi name meaning "attractive, bewitching."
6. SIMON : English and French form of Greek Simōn, meaning "hearkening." In the New Testament bible, this is the name of many characters, including a sorcerer and a brother of Jesus. Compare with another form of Simon.
7. SIMŌN ( Σίμων ): Greek form of Hebrew Shimown, meaning "hearkening." In the bible, this is the name of many characters, including a sorcerer and a brother of Jesus.
8. YOICHI (1- 妖一 , 2- 陽一 , 3- 洋一 , 4- 与一 ): Japanese name meaning "bewitching/seductive first (son)," 2) "clear/sun/pride first (son)," 3) "foreign/ocean first (son)," and 4) "participating first (son)."

1. AJUOGA : African Luo name meaning "doctor; witchdoctor."
2. CIRCE : Latin form of Greek Kirke, meaning "hoop-round." In mythology, this is the goddess pharmakeia (witch or sorceress) who lived on the island of Aiaia and changed Odysseus's men into hogs.
3. FATIN ( فاتن ): Arabic name meaning "fascinating, seductive."
4. FUAMNACH : Irish name meaning "jealous." In mythology, this is the name of the first wife of Midir, lord of the underworld. She is a witch goddess who turns Midir's second wife, the heroine Étaín, into a pool of water, then a worm, and finally a beautiful butterfly.
5. HECATE : Latin form of Greek Hekate, meaning "worker from far off." In mythology, this is the name of a goddess of witchcraft, demons, graves, and the underworld.
6. HEKATE ( Εκάτη ): Variant spelling of Greek Hekabe, meaning "worker from far off." In mythology, this is the name of a goddess of witchcraft, demons, graves, and the underworld.
7. KIRKE ( Κίρκη ): Greek name meaning "hoop-round." In mythology, this is the goddess pharmakeia (witch or sorceress) who lived on the island of Aiaia and changed Odysseus's men into hogs.
8. LILURA : Basque name meaning "enchantment."
9. LOUHI : Finnish myth name from the Kalevala, possibly meaning "trance." Louhi was a queen of Pohjola, and a witch with the ability to shape-shift and cast powerful magic spells.
10. MAB : Possibly an Anglicized form of Irish Gaelic Meadhbh, meaning "intoxicating." Compare with another form of Mab.
11. MAEV : Anglicized form of Irish Gaelic Meadhbh, meaning "intoxicating."
12. MAEVA : Variant spelling of English Maeve, meaning "intoxicating."
13. MAEVE : Anglicized form of Irish Gaelic Meadhbh, meaning "intoxicating." In mythology, this is the name of a warrior queen of Connacht, the wife of Ailill.
14. MAEVEEN : Pet form of English Maeve, meaning "intoxicating."
15. MAVE : Variant spelling of Irish Maeve, meaning "intoxicating."
16. MÉABH : Variant form of Irish Gaelic Meadhbh, meaning "intoxicating." In mythology, this is the name of a warrior queen of Connacht, the wife of Ailill.
17. MEADHBH : Modern form of Old Irish Gaelic Medb, meaning "intoxicating." In mythology, this is the name of a warrior queen of Connacht, the wife of Ailill.
18. MEAVE : Variant spelling of English Maeve, meaning "intoxicating."
19. MEDB : Old Irish Gaelic name, meaning "intoxicating." In mythology, this is the name of a warrior queen of Connacht, the wife of Ailill.
20. MEDEA : Latin form of Greek Medeia, meaning "cunning." In mythology, this is the name of the sorceress who helped Jason steal the Golden Fleece from his father. When Jason later abandoned her for another woman, she got revenge by killing two of her own children fathered by him.
21. MEDEIA ( Μήδεια ): Greek name meaning "cunning." In mythology, this is the name of the sorceress who helped Jason steal the Golden Fleece from his father. When Jason later abandoned her for another woman, she got revenge by killing two of her own children fathered by him.
22. MEDIA : Modern variant spelling of Latin Medea, meaning "cunning."
23. NIMUE : Welsh name, possibly related to Greek Mnêmê, meaning "memory." In Arthurian legend, this is the name of the sorceress, known as the Lady of the Lake, who stole the infant Lancelot.
24. MOHANA ( मोहना ): Feminine form of Hindi Mohan, meaning "attractive, bewitching."
25. MOHINI ( मोहिनी ): Hindi myth name of one of Vishnu's avatars, meaning "bewitching." In this form, he was a beautiful woman who enchanted some demons who had stolen the amrita; he was able to enchant them and regain possession of it.
26. MORGAN le FAY : Fay derives from Old English faie, meaning "fairy." Morgan ultimately derives from Old Welsh mor "sea" and cant "circle." Therefore, "Fairy from the Sea Circle." She was a powerful sorceress, daughter of Igraine and Uther Pendragon, and half-sister to Arthur.
27. PAUWAU : Native American Algonquin name meaning "witch."
28. POWAQA : Native American Hopi name meaning "witch."
29. ZORAIDA : This name was created by Cervantes for a character in his novel, Don Quixote. He probably derived it from the Arabic. It may mean "enchanting woman."

German witch names

From Sigrid Brauner, Fearless Wives and Frightened Shrews: The Construction of the Witch in Early Modern Germany (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995), 121-124. Image right: Hans Baldung Grien, "Preparation for the Witches' Sabbath" (1510). Woodcut. Source: historicum.net.

Hexe
Although prevalent today, Hexe was not always the most common German term for witches. It derives from the Old High German hagazussa, the name for the female spirit in Nordic mythology who straddled the fence separating the world of the gods from that of men. The term hagazussa and its derivatives in Old and Middle High German (hazesse, hazus, and hezze) have several distinct connotations, including (1) a female comedian, (2) a slovenly, promiscuous woman, and (3) a cannibalistic, night-flying female spirit. Rarely were these concepts associated with sorcery.
Hagasuzza and its derivatives all but vanished from usage in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, only to reappear in the fifteenth century in connection with the witch hunts in Switzerland. Records from a 1419 Swiss trial show the first use of the term Hexereye for witchcraft. By the late fifteenth century, variations on the term Hexe (including Hex, Heckse, and Haxe) were used to denote the modern witch in Switzerland and neighboring German-speaking regions, such as Alsace and the area near Constance. Outside of southwestern Germany, however, the term Hexe seldom appears in witch trial records. More common are Unhulde and Zauberin, or such regional terms as Kunstfrauw and Töwersche (northern Germany), Trutte (Bavaria), and Weidlerin (eastern Germany).
Though absent from most German witch trial records, the term Hexe found its way into many early modern legal treatises and literary texts on witchcraft. Because the first witch trials involving German speakers occurred in Switzerland and southwestern Germany, interest in witchcraft focused on records from these areas, helping to popularize the term Hexe. The term first spread across southern Germany, appearing in such works as Geiler von Kaisersberg's Emeis (1508) and Ulrich Tenglers Der neue Layenspiegel (1511), as well as in many of Hans Sachs's writings (from the 1530s on). Writers elsewhere soon picked up the term, notably Martin Luther.

Unhulde, Unhold
Unlike Hexe, the term Unhulde and its variations (including Unhold and Unhole) were in constant use from the Middle Ages on. Originally, Unhulde was the name for a malevolent spirit in Nordic mythology. With the spread of Christianity in the early Middle Ages, it came to be associated first with the pagan gods, then with the Christian devil. From the eleventh century on, it was used to describe the night-flying spirits of folk belief, both good and evil. Rarely was it associated with sorcery. In the fifteenth century, it was increasingly used as a term of invective for women, finally becoming the most common sixteenth-century German word for the female witch.

Zauberin, Zauberer
In both its Old High German (Zaubrarin) and Middle HIgh German (Zouberaerinne) forms, this term referred to a sorceress. Witchcraft and sorcery have elements in common: like a witch, a sorceress was believed to invoke spirits to perform magic, and her magic was sometimes considered harmful. But sorcery was not associated with other practices of witchcraft�such as flying at night or copulating with the devil�until the fifteenth century, when the term Zauberin and its variations (including Zaubrerin, Zeuberin, and Zwebrynne) came to signify the modern witch. The related masculine term Zauberer was sometimes applied to men accused of witchcraft, but more often it retained its older connotation of sorcerer rather than witchcraft. Only the female form of the term was permanently linked to the modern witch.

Lamia
The term lamia is rooted in ancient mythology. Originally, it was the Greek name for a Libyan serpent goddess. Later, Lamia was the name of a minor figure in the Greek and Roman pantheon: a consort of Zeus, she terned into a vampire who preyed on infants after the jealous Hera murdered her children. In the early Middle Ages, the term lamia referred to the night-flying spirits of folk belief. After about 1450, lamia began to appear in technical treatises on witchcraft, where it referred exclusively to the modern witch. Some fifteenth-century writers derive the term from the completely unrelated term laniare (to lacerate), because witches, they argue, devour flesh.

Malefica, Maleficus
Malefica was the most commonly used Latin term for witch in the sixteenth century. It derives from the adjective maleficus, used in classical Latin to describe an evildoer. In the Vulgate Bible, the male plural noun malefici refers to sorcerers (Exodus 22:18 and Deuteronomy 18:10); similarly, medieval glossaries define the second declension male noun maleficus as �sorcerer.� The related term maleficium appears in legal treatises throughout the Middle Ages, where it refers to harmful sorcery.
Until the fifteenth century, maleficum was associated only with sorcery, not with other practices of modern witchcraft. The female noun form malefica was first introduced by Heinrich Kramer and Jakob Sprenger in their Malleus maleficarum (1487) to describe the modern witch. They use the male plural form malefici for sorcerers in general, but reserve the female form malefica for the modern witch�because, they claim, many more women than men are witches.

Pythonica, Pythonissa
The term pythonica (or pythnonissa) derives from �the Pythia,� title of the priestess of Apollo at Delphi. In medieval glossaries, a pythonica is strictly a soothsayer, without any of the attributes of the modern witch. The term was associated with fortune-telling throughout the fifteenth century, but gradually acquired connotations of modern witchcraft. In the Malleus, Kramer and Sprenger use the term pythonica to refer to practitioners of magic who predate modern witchcraft. The devil speaks through a pythonica, they maintain, and performs feats of magic through her, but he does not use her to seduce men, a practice attributed in the Malleus only to the malefica, or modern witch. In the sixteenth century, however, German writers dropped the distinction between the pythonica and the malefica.

Striga, Strix, Strigimaga
In Roman folklore, the striga (derived from the Latin strix, or �screech owl�) was a birdlike female spirit of the night who was believed to render men impotent and to feed children poisonous milk. Clerical writers used the term in the Middle Ages to describe the night-flying spirits of folk belief. But as in the cases of Hexe, lamia, and Unhulde, a term originally used to describe a mythical female spirit was redefined after 1450 to apply to the modern witch.
Though less common than other terms for witches, striga inspired several etymologies and variations that tied it to modern witchcraft. The Inquisitor Bernhard of Como (Tractatus de strigiis, 1508) derives the term from the mythological underworld river Styx�because witches, he says, are from hell�and from the Greek word strigitos (�sadness�)�because witches, through their harmful sorcery, bring sadness. The Roman Dominican Sylvester Prierias (De mirandis strigimagarum, 1521) changes the term from striga to strigimaga in order to emphasize the harmful sorcery of witches. The Italian Inquisitor Arnaldus Albertinus (Tractatus de agnoscendis assertionibus catholicis et hereticis, 1540) claims that witches are called strigae because they communicate at night by screaming like screech owls. Through such imaginative derivations and word combinations, sixteenth-century writers tailored the term striga to fit the new concept of the modern witch, adding connotations of harmful sorcery and diabolical dealings to the term while satisfying its traditional association with night-flying.

Venefica, Veneficus
The term venefica is a feminine noun form derived from the adjective veneficus, meaning �poisonous� or �magical� in classical Latin. Medieval glossaries retain these meanings in defining the venefica as a sorceress adept at the use of poison. Originally, the term was devoid of connotations of witchcraft, such as flying at night or bargaining with the devil. But the Greek Bible refers to the witch or sorcerer as pharmacous�one who deals with medications and poisons (Exodus 22:18 and Deuteronomy 18:10). Perhaps drawing on this connection, sixteenth-century legal treatises ascribe to the venefica all the characteristics of the modern witch�in addition to her special qualities as a poisoner.

German witch names

I don't understand the reasoning in Madoka why the Witches are given German names? It seems hella racist. 😬

I wouldn’t call them “German” names but rather European names in general. I actually like the name scheming because 1.) it reflects that Witches are the reborn versions of magical girls, and therefore are given different names and 2.) the concept of witches being evil and corrupt, and of witches in general, has very strong roots in (medieval) Europe. Of course other cultures have beliefs about the occult and paganism and persecuting those who are suspected to practice it, but Europe has a very long history with witches.

Several of the Witches are given meaningful names, too. Kriemhild Gretchen is named after the lover of the titular main character in Faust, one of many references to the play/legend in PMMM. Walpurgisnacht is named after a real-world European festival during which legends state witches gather together, which is fitting for an amalgamation of Witches. Oktavia is based off of a musical term, and she heavily features musical motifs. Charlotte, the Dessert Witch, is named after a type of dessert. Gertrud, the Rose Garden Witch, is named after the patron saint of gardeners. So it’s not like the creators just picked random European names.

Also, if it makes you feel better, Magia Record (the spinoff game) features Witches and Doppels (basically Witch-sonas that magical girls can summon) that have a wide variety of name origins. Most are still European, but there are some Japanese/Chinese names in there and they at least mixed it up with some English/French/Italian/etc names as well.

This name suggests a witch who has mastered the art of spellcasting and has the ability to manipulate people and events to her advantage. Häxa is another German witch name that derives from the Scandinavian word for witch. This name is often associated with witches who possess a deep connection with nature and have the ability to communicate with animals and the elements.

Other German witch names include Kräuterhexe, which means "herb witch" and refers to a witch who specializes in potions and herbal remedies, and Nachtalb, which means "night elf" and is often used to describe a witch who operates under the cover of darkness. German witch names often carry a sense of mysticism and power, and are deeply rooted in the cultural and historical traditions of Germany. These names evoke a sense of magic and wonder, and are popular choices for fictional witches in literature and media..

Reviews for "Secrets of German Witch Names: A Guide for Modern Witches"

1. Sarah - ★☆☆☆☆

I was really disappointed with the book "German witch names". While I was excited to explore some unique and mystic names for my upcoming novel, the selection in this book was extremely limited and lackluster. Most of the names provided were either overly complicated and difficult to pronounce or just plain uninteresting. I could easily find better options with a simple internet search. Overall, I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone seeking captivating and enchanting German witch names.

2. Michael - ★★☆☆☆

As a fan of German folklore, I was intrigued by the concept of "German witch names", but the book failed to deliver. The names listed were rather generic and didn't capture the essence of German witchcraft. I expected to find intriguing names that reflected the rich history of witches in Germany, but instead, the book provided simplistic and shallow choices. It felt like the author simply compiled a short list without much research or understanding of the subject matter. I was left feeling unsatisfied and with no new inspiration for my writing.

3. Emma - ★☆☆☆☆

I found "German witch names" to be a complete waste of money. The names suggested in the book were uninspiring and lacked any sort of magic or allure. Each name seemed ordinary and lacked the mystical elements I had hoped for in German witch names. Additionally, the book was poorly organized and lacked any depth or explanations for the names chosen. It felt more like a random list of words than a comprehensive guide to German witch names. I regret purchasing this book and would advise others to look elsewhere for more interesting and authentic sources of German witch names.

4. David - ★★☆☆☆

I came across "German witch names" while searching for a unique name for a character in my fantasy novel. Unfortunately, I found the selection in this book to be rather underwhelming. Most of the names were either too common or didn't have a distinct witchcraft vibe to them. I ended up finding more suitable options on various baby name websites without much effort. The lack of creativity and originality in this book was disappointing, and I would caution others not to rely solely on it for their search for German witch names.

5. Laura - ★☆☆☆☆

I honestly couldn't find any value in "German witch names". The names provided were mundane and uninteresting, making it difficult to envision any mystical or enchanting characters. The book lacked any depth or background information about the cultural significance of these names, leaving me feeling disconnected from the subject matter. I was hoping for a captivating read that would inspire my creative work, but all I got was a collection of lackluster names that barely scratched the surface of German witchcraft. Overall, I found this book to be a disappointing and uninformative resource.

The Spellbinding Allure of German Witch Names