Random name picker
Paste any list of names and pick one fairly. The wheel shows the draw as it happens, which is the part a text generator cannot do, and the winner is written out underneath so there is nothing to interpret.
Picking several names without repeats
Drawing more than one name is where most pickers quietly go wrong. If you spin twice and leave the list untouched, the same name can come up both times — that is what independent draws mean, and it is correct behaviour for a coin flip but almost never what somebody picking two prize winners intended.
Turn on "Remove the winner after each spin" and each name leaves the wheel as it is drawn. Three spins then give you three different people, which is what "pick three names" means in ordinary English. The removed names stay visible in the list of past winners, so you can read the whole draw back out afterwards.
If you genuinely do want independent draws — a name that can be picked twice, like assigning a task that one person could get two of — leave the option off. Both behaviours are legitimate; the mistake is not knowing which one you are running.
When a list picker is the wrong tool
A wheel is a good answer when the outcome needs to be seen: a room is watching, or the people affected need to believe the draw was not rerun until it produced a convenient name. It is a poor answer when nobody is watching and you just need a value — a script that needs a random element from an array should use its own language's random function, not a web page.
It is also the wrong tool where the draw has legal weight. Prize draws above a certain value, public lotteries and anything a regulator will look at need an auditable process with a record: a documented method, a witness, and often a licence. A browser spin is transparent to the room and invisible to anybody who was not there.
Getting a messy list into the box
Paste straight from a spreadsheet column and each cell arrives on its own line, which is already the format the wheel wants. Blank rows are dropped automatically, and leading and trailing spaces are trimmed, so the usual copy-paste debris does not turn into empty slices.
A comma-separated list pasted as one long line becomes one entry, because the wheel splits on line breaks rather than guessing. Names contain commas — "Smith, J." is one person — and a tool that split on them would break real lists more often than it helped. Use find-and-replace in your editor to turn commas into line breaks first, or paste the column rather than the row.
Common questions
How do I pick a name at random from a list?
Paste the list into the box with one name per line and press Spin. The wheel is built from your list, turns for a few seconds, and stops with one name under the pointer, which is also written out below the wheel.
Can the same name be picked twice?
Only if you want it to be. By default every spin is independent, so a repeat is possible. Switch on "Remove the winner after each spin" and each drawn name leaves the wheel, which is what you want when picking several different people.
Can I put duplicate names on the wheel?
Yes, and it is a useful trick. Two children called Sam both get their own slice, and repeating a name deliberately is the simplest way to double someone's chances in a way everyone watching can see.