How to Use Name Tags in Minecraft

Name your cat, dog or frog

Name Tags can be used in Minecraft to rename basically anything. You can finally give your pet wolf or cat an official name, or even throw a new identity upon some helpless villager. As long as you have extra tags, you can keep renaming any mob you find, and it’s actually very simple to do it. Here’s all you need to know about using Name Tags on Minecraft.

Recommended Videos

How to Use Name Tags in Minecraft

Once you obtain a Name Tag from chests in dungeons or such, you’re good to start imposing your preferred names upon others. They can also be obtained by fishing or trading with some villagers, but these methods are quite more complicated.

To use it, you first need to set a name for the tag. To do this, head to a nearby Anvil or make one using iron ingots. Insert the Name Tag in the Anvil to choose which name to give it. This will also be the name of whichever creature you give the tag to, so choose wisely. This action will always cost you 1 Experience level, and you can do it as long as you have spare levels.

Rename Name Tag
Screenshot by Prima Games

Related: How to Breed Frogs in Minecraft

After that, approach the animal or villager you’re renaming and use the tag on it. You will lose the tag, but now that creature will finally have a name to call its own. With that, it will now be excluded from the maximum mob count in the game, which means they don’t despawn naturally by walking too far away from them. 

This is helpful to avoid losing valuable animals such as horses as it can be hard to find and tame another one later. And, of course, you can use it just because you got too attached to your pet and wanted to give it a nice name. And not losing it is also a good extra. Having fun’s the whole point of the game, so don’t be ashamed of that!


Prima Games is supported by our audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn a small affiliate commission. Learn more about our Affiliate Policy

About the Author

Patrick Souza

Patrick has been working for Prima since 2022 and joined as a Staff Writer in 2023. He's been interested in gaming journalism since college, and that was the path he took once he had his degree in hands. Diligently ignores his ever-growing backlog to keep raiding in Final Fantasy XIV, exploring in Genshin Impact or replaying some of his favorite RPGs from time to time. Loves tackling hard challenges in games, but his cats are still the hardest bosses he could ask for.