Name Picker

The Name Picker takes a list of names or items that you paste in and either draws one or more of them at random, or divides the whole list into random, evenly-sized teams. It is the impartial tie-breaker for raffles, giveaways, classroom cold-calls, chore rotations, and every "who goes first?" argument — no spreadsheet formulas, no bias, just a fair shuffle.

Unlike a fictional-name generator, this tool never invents anything: every result comes straight from the list you provide, so you stay in full control of the pool.

How to use it

1. Paste your names. Enter one name per line, or switch the Separator to comma- or tab-separated if you are pasting from a spreadsheet or CSV.
2. Choose a mode.
   • Pick names — set how many to draw and press Pick.
   • Split into teams — set the number of teams and the list is shuffled and dealt out round-robin so the teams differ in size by at most one member.
3. Read the result. Copy it to the clipboard or download it as a text file.

Pick options

• Number to pick — how many winners to draw in a single run (1–1000).
• Allow duplicates — off by default, so each name can win only once (sampling without replacement). Turn it on to draw with replacement, letting the same name come up more than once — useful when you want independent draws, like rolling for the same prize repeatedly. With duplicates off you cannot pick more names than the list contains; the tool tells you so rather than returning a short list.

Advanced options

• Exclude names — paste names here (one per line) to drop them from the pool before any pick. Matching is case-insensitive, so you can quickly remove last week's winner without editing the main list.
• Weighted names — enable this and use the Name x3 syntax to give a name several entries, raising its odds. Alice x3 counts as three tickets in the raffle; a plain name counts once. Weights are capped at 100 entries per name.

Common use cases

• Raffles and giveaways — draw one or several winners fairly from your entrant list.
• Team assignment — split a class, meetup, or sports group into balanced random teams in one click.
• Decision-making — settle who presents first, who does the dishes, or which idea to try next.
• Sampling — pull a random subset from a longer list for spot-checks or interviews.

Is the pick truly random?

Yes. Each run reshuffles the pool with a Fisher–Yates shuffle driven by the browser's random number generator, so pressing Pick again gives a fresh, independent result. There is no fixed seed — the tool is built to be unpredictable, not reproducible.

Does anything leave my browser?

No. All parsing, shuffling, and picking happen locally in your browser. Your list of names is never uploaded or stored.