Your Name On Earth
Spell your name with real NASA satellite photos · also called "Your Name From Space"
Type your name. See it drawn from real Earth features - rivers, craters, coastlines, and ice - photographed by NASA satellites and astronauts. Every letter comes with the place it’s from, the satellite that took the photo, and a one-line story.
Your name spelled with Earth
All imagery: NASA Earth Observatory · public domain (US federal works, 17 USC §105)
How to use this tool
- Type your name in the box above. Letters A-Z only, up to 12 characters. Works on phone, tablet, and desktop. The image appears as you type - no button to press.
- Each letter is a real place. The tool draws each letter using a NASA satellite or astronaut photograph of an Earth feature shaped like that letter.
- Try a different image. Every letter now has multiple NASA Landsat variants - look for the small button on a tile and tap it to swap to a different photograph for that letter.
- Read the place stories below the strip. Each letter has the place name, country, lat/lon, and a link to the NASA Earth Observatory page about it.
- Download as PNG (1200x800, ready for X, WhatsApp, or your profile picture) or copy the share link to send to a friend - when they open it, they'll see your name already rendered.
Side-by-side with NASA's "Your Name in Landsat"
NASA's "Your Name in Landsat" launched in 2024 and has been visited more than 715,000 times. It's the project that inspired this one. We use public-domain NASA Earth Observatory imagery plus NASA's curated Landsat letter variants, with a few practical additions that came from people sending us screenshots and asking "wait, where on Earth is that?".
| Feature | NASA's tool | Ours |
|---|---|---|
| Imagery source | NASA Landsat + Earth Observatory | Same public-domain NASA/USGS imagery, with NASA credit on every variant |
| Place stories per letter | Coordinates only | 1–2 sentence story explaining what you're looking at and how it got that shape |
| Multiple images per letter | Yes (random pick on each load) | Yes - tap the button on a tile to cycle through NASA's curated Landsat variants, with a stable default so the same name always renders the same way first. |
| Country tags | No | Country flag for every letter, with extra notes when a place has a noteworthy backstory (e.g. Andaman coral reefs, Lonar meteorite crater, Mackenzie River delta) |
| Share link with auto-render | No - single-use page | ?text=YOURNAME permalink. Send it to a friend, they see your name pre-rendered. |
| PNG export | Single image | 1200×800 share card with starfield background, sized for X, WhatsApp, Instagram, LinkedIn |
| Mobile UX | Works on mobile | Built mobile-first; the input sits directly under the rendered strip so you can iterate fast on a phone |
| Sign-up | None | None |
| Cost | Free | Free |
| What we do with your name | Sent to NASA Analytics | Nothing - it stays in your browser and is never sent to any server |
For a longer write-up of how each of these decisions was made, see the companion article: Your Name On Earth vs NASA's "Your Name in Landsat" - the full comparison.
Where do these letter shapes come from?
Every letter you see is a real photograph of a real place on Earth, taken by a NASA satellite (Landsat 7, Landsat 8, Terra, Aqua, ASTER) or by an astronaut on the International Space Station. Some are obvious - a river bend that looks exactly like a J, an island chain that traces an I. Others are fleeting - a temporary cloud pattern, a phytoplankton bloom that lasted only a few days before drifting apart.
The default set is curated from NASA Earth Observatory's "Reading the ABCs from Space" collection, which the agency has been building for over a decade. The alternate tiles use NASA's public-domain "Your Name in Landsat" image set, credited to the Landsat Project Science Support Team. We also add our own sourced variants where we find strong new examples, such as Lake Akhmaz in Azerbaijan for the letter A.
Country-specific features worth looking out for
Earth's alphabet doesn't respect borders, but a few of the letters happen to fall on places with stories that often get glossed over in generic captions. A short geographic tour of the set:
- "I" - Andaman Islands, India (Bay of Bengal, 12.5° N, 92.8° E): The thin bright rings around several of the islands are coral reefs that were lifted up by the magnitude-9.1 Sumatra earthquake of 2004. Terra/MODIS, 10 February 2007.
- "Q" - Lonar Lake, India (Maharashtra, 19.98° N, 76.51° E): The only known meteorite crater on Earth formed in basaltic rock, dating back roughly 50,000 years. The river feeding it makes the tail of the Q. Terra/ASTER, 2004.
- "D" - Mackenzie River Delta, Canada: One of the largest Arctic river deltas on the planet, branching across the Northwest Territories before emptying into the Beaufort Sea.
- "O" - Crater Lake, USA (Oregon): Formed when the volcano Mount Mazama collapsed about 7,700 years ago, leaving a near-perfect circle of water 593 m deep.
- "M" - Tien Shan mountains, Central Asia: A mountain range straddling Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and China - the ridges form a near-textbook M when seen from above.
- "P" - Lake Pukaki, New Zealand: The glacier-fed turquoise lake on the South Island, with a thin outflow river that closes the loop of the P.
The full place story for every letter appears below the strip when you generate a name.
Frequently asked questions
Is this the official NASA tool?
No. The official NASA tool is "Your Name in Landsat" at science.nasa.gov. This is an independent re-implementation built by Space Universe, using the same public-domain NASA imagery, with extra features layered on top. We're not affiliated with NASA.
Are the satellite images real?
Yes - every image is a real, unaltered photograph of Earth from NASA's archives. We've cropped each one to a 720×720 square so the alphabet strip looks consistent, but the underlying picture is exactly what the satellite or astronaut captured. Click the "NASA source" link under any letter to see the full-resolution original on NASA Earth Observatory.
Can I use the downloaded image commercially?
The underlying NASA imagery is public domain (US federal works, 17 USC §105) so yes - you can use the rendered PNG anywhere, including commercial projects. NASA does request that you don't imply NASA endorses your project, which seems fair.
What languages and scripts does it support?
Right now: Latin alphabet (A–Z), case-insensitive, up to 12 characters. We're working on additional scripts - the slow part is finding satellite imagery that resembles each new letter shape. If you'd like to suggest places for a particular script, get in touch.
How is this different from a "NASA satellite name generator"?
This isn't a name generator - it doesn't invent names. It takes a name you type and renders it using real Earth features that look like the letters of that name. Think of it as a satellite-photo alphabet, not an AI name maker.
Does it work without internet?
The page only downloads the letter images needed for the name you type. If you cycle through many variants, your browser fetches those additional images on demand and caches them for later.
Privacy
Your name never leaves your browser. We don't store it, log it, send it to any server, or use it for advertising. The tool runs entirely on your device. The page itself loads anonymous Google Analytics for total visitor counts, same as the rest of our site - read our privacy policy for the long version.
Credit and licence
All satellite and astronaut imagery is from NASA Earth Observatory and is in the public domain under US federal copyright law (17 USC §105). The tool, the curation, the place stories, and the share-card design are by Space Universe and are provided free for personal and commercial use.