If you’ve ever spent hours taming a pack of wolves, breeding a rare blue axolotl, or curating a mob zoo in your world, you know the panic of turning around to find your favorite creature has despawned. That’s where name tags come in, and learning how to use name tag in Minecraft is one of the simplest quality-of-life skills you can pick up for any game mode. I’ve been playing Minecraft for over a decade, and I still use name tags constantly, from labeling my villager trading hall staff to triggering silly hidden easter eggs with my friends on multiplayer servers. This guide will walk you through everything from getting name tags in survival to little-known tricks you probably haven’t tried yet.
How to Use Name Tag in Minecraft: Basic Step-by-Step Process
Before you can slap a name tag on a mob, you’ll need to prepare it first, since name tags come blank when you find them. You don’t need any rare materials for this step, just a single experience level and an anvil, which you can craft with three iron blocks and four iron ingots if you don’t already have one lying around. First, place your anvil and open its interface. Put the blank name tag in the leftmost input slot, then type the name you want to use in the text bar at the top of the anvil menu. You’ll see the cost show up as 1 experience level on the right side of the interface.
Take the renamed name tag out of the output slot, and you’re ready to use it. All you have to do now is walk up to the mob you want to name, and right-click (or use the place action on console/mobile) with the name tag selected in your hotbar. You’ll see the name pop up above the mob’s head immediately, and it will no longer despawn naturally, even if you wander thousands of blocks away. One important note: you can’t rename other players with name tags, even on multiplayer servers, so save them for your mobs instead. That said, you can rename most passive, neutral, and hostile mobs, with only a few exceptions like the ender dragon and wither.
How to Get Name Tags in Survival Mode
A lot of new players waste hours trying to find a crafting recipe for name tags, only to find out there isn’t one. You have to find them in loot, trade for them, or fish them up, and there are a few methods that are way more reliable than others. I’ve tested all of these methods over dozens of survival worlds, and some are definitely better depending on how far along you are in your playthrough. The best ways to get name tags in survival are:
- Chest loot in generated structures: You’ll find name tags most often in dungeon chests, mineshaft chests, and woodland mansion chests, with dungeon chests having a roughly 28% chance to spawn one per chest. They also show up less often in desert temples, jungle temples, and stronghold library chests.
- Trading with master-level librarians: If you have a villager trading hall set up, master-level librarians will sell name tags for 20 to 22 emeralds each. This is the most consistent method if you don’t want to go exploring, as you can restock the librarian as many times as you want.
- Fishing: Name tags count as a “treasure” item when fishing, so if you have a fishing rod with the Luck of the Sea enchantment, you have a small chance to reel one in while you’re afk fishing. It’s slower than the other methods, but it’s a nice bonus if you’re already farming fish or enchanted books.
If you’re playing in creative mode, you don’t have to worry about any of this, of course. You can find name tags in the tools tab of the creative inventory, and you can rename them as many times as you want for free, no anvil or experience required. I usually keep a stack of them in my hotbar when I’m working on creative builds, to label custom mobs or mark different sections of large projects.
Fun Name Tag Easter Eggs You Can Try Right Now
Mojang has added tons of hidden little tricks tied to name tags over the years, and most casual players don’t know about half of them. These work in every game mode, and they’re a great way to mess with friends on multiplayer or add some personality to your world. One of the most well known easter eggs is naming any mob “Dinnerbone” or “Grumm”, which will flip the mob upside down permanently. It works for every mob, from creepers to villagers to even the ender dragon if you manage to get close enough to name it. I once flipped every mob in my friend’s base while they were offline, and they spent 20 minutes convinced their game was glitched before they figured out what I’d done.
Another fan favorite is naming a sheep “jeb_”, which will make its wool cycle through every color in the game constantly. Keep in mind that if you shear the sheep, you’ll still get the original color of wool it had before you named it, so don’t expect to farm infinite rainbow wool from it. If you name a rabbit “Toast”, it will get a special black and white spotted skin that’s a tribute to a real life rabbit owned by one of Mojang’s former developers. Hostile mobs have fun easter eggs too: if you name a vindicator “Johnny”, it will attack every single mob it sees, including other illagers, creepers, and even you if you get too close. It’s a fun way to set up little mob battle arenas if you’re bored of regular survival gameplay. I once named a stray “Johnny” and let it loose in a zombie spawner area, and it cleared out the entire room in under a minute without taking a single hit.
Pro Tips for Using Name Tags Effectively
Once you get the hang of using name tags, there are a few small tricks that will make them way more useful, especially in long term survival worlds or multiplayer servers where you share builds with other people. Always name your villager traders first before you build a trading hall around them. It’s way too easy to accidentally hit a villager and make them run off, or have a zombie break in and turn them, and a name tag will make sure you can find them easily, or at least recognize them if they get turned into a zombie villager. You can also use name tags to label mobs in public builds, like mob zoos or farm displays, so other players on your server know exactly what they’re looking at without having to ask.
Another pro tip: you can reset a name tag’s name by putting it back in an anvil and deleting the text in the name bar, so you don’t have to waste a new name tag if you make a typo or want to reuse an old one. The only catch is that you’ll have to pay another 1 experience level to rename it again, but that’s a tiny cost compared to hunting down a new name tag. If you’re playing on a PvP server, you can use name tags to trick other players too. I’ve named a creeper “Hidden Chest” before and left it in a cave near my base, and more than one raider has walked right up to it expecting to find loot, only to get blown up.
Just remember that name tags don’t stop mobs from taking damage or dying to environmental hazards, so you still need to keep your named pets fenced in or protected from fall damage, lava, and hostile mobs. I learned that the hard way after I named my first pet fox “Red” and turned around for two seconds to find it had run straight into a campfire. It’s also worth noting that named hostile mobs will still attack you like normal, so don’t think naming a creeper “Cuddles” will stop it from blowing up your base.
Name tags are one of those small Minecraft items that don’t seem game changing at first, but once you start using them, you’ll wonder how you ever played without them. Whether you’re keeping your pets safe, triggering silly easter eggs, or organizing your villager trading hall, knowing how to use name tag in Minecraft opens up a ton of small quality of life upgrades for any play style. Next time you find a name tag while exploring, don’t just toss it in a chest and forget about it. Try out one of the easter eggs we mentioned, or name your favorite pet, and you’ll see just how much fun these little items can be.