Random Name Picker

Building your name list

Start by putting one name on each line. You can paste straight from a spreadsheet column, a register, a chat export or a sign-up sheet — line breaks are all the tool needs to tell names apart. Spare spaces at the ends of lines are trimmed automatically, and blank lines are ignored, so a messy copy-paste still produces a clean list. The counter under the box tells you exactly how many entries it found, which is a quick way to catch a name that accidentally merged with the one above it.

Names don't have to be unique. If two students share a first name, leave both Sam lines in — the picker treats them as two separate entries, each with its own chance. If you'd rather collapse exact duplicates, the Remove duplicates button does it in one click without disturbing the order of the rest.

One name, fairly

For the classic "who's next?" moment, keep the count at one and press Pick. Every name on the list has an identical chance — with thirty students, that's a flat 1 ÷ 30 each, every single time. Because each draw is independent, a name that just came up can come up again on the very next press. That's genuinely random, but it isn't always what a classroom wants.

If you'd prefer to work through everyone before anyone repeats, switch on Remove winner from list. Each chosen name drops out of the box as it's drawn, so you cycle through the whole class with no one picked twice — and you can see at a glance who's left.

Several names at once

Need to form a reading group, pick two helpers or shortlist five entrants? Set How many to that number and leave No repeats on. The picker shuffles the list and hands back that many distinct names in a single draw, presented as a clean numbered set you can read out or copy. Turn No repeats off only when you genuinely want independent draws that may land on the same name more than once.

Giving someone extra chances

Sometimes a flat list isn't fair either — a fundraiser where people bought different numbers of tickets, or a reward draw where good behaviour earns extra entries. Add a weight by ending a line with *N: Priya *4 counts as four tickets, so Priya is four times as likely to win as a plain name. The weighted-ticket total appears in the counter so you can sanity-check the odds before you draw.

Why pick names in the browser

Student names, team rosters and customer lists are exactly the kind of data you don't want sitting on someone else's server. This picker runs entirely in your browser: the list is read from the text box, the draw happens on your device, and nothing is uploaded or logged. Close the tab and it's gone. That also means it keeps working on flaky classroom Wi-Fi once the page has loaded — and for a public prize draw, there's simply no backend anyone could accuse of being rigged.