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How AI Makes Us More Human: Insights from NameStormers’ Latest Naming Study

 

Key Takeaways:

  • AI is a powerful tool that enhances creative capabilities, but it cannot replace human ingenuity.
  • The best names result from a blend of AI-generated insights and human expertise.
  • Emotional resonance and subconscious reactions are critical for creating impactful names.
  • Effective names go beyond describing a product—they forge deeper emotional connections.
  • AI has the potential to make us more human and more creative in the naming process.
YouTube video

Introduction

Welcome to our first blog of 2025! At NameStormers, we’ve been delving into the world of artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on creative processes, particularly naming. As we explored different AI tools, we discovered something remarkable: AI doesn’t replace the human element—it enhances it. This revelation is especially significant in naming, where intuition, emotion, and quick reactions play a crucial role. Today, we’ll share a real-world example that illustrates the perfect synergy between AI and human creativity, along with the limitations AI still faces.

The Rise of AI in Naming

Generative AI tools like GPTs and other large language models (LLMs) have become surprisingly adept at brainstorming names. With the right prompting and an iterative approach, these tools can generate names that rival even the best creatives. For us at NameStormers, they provide a valuable springboard, offering fresh directions and ideas we might not have considered. Yet, the true power of naming lies beyond AI’s reach.

While AI can propose a long list of creative suggestions, it cannot determine which names will resonate deeply with your audience. Naming is as much about human connection as it is about creativity. A great name must cut through the clutter, grab attention, and spark an emotional connection almost instantaneously.

The Rise of AI in Naming

Generative AI tools like GPTs and other large language models (LLMs) have become surprisingly adept at brainstorming names. With the right prompting and an iterative approach, these tools can generate names that rival even the best creatives. For us at NameStormers, they provide a valuable springboard, offering fresh directions and ideas we might not have considered. Yet, the true power of naming lies beyond AI’s reach.

While AI can propose a long list of creative suggestions, it cannot determine which names will resonate deeply with your audience. Naming is as much about human connection as it is about creativity. A great name must cut through the clutter, grab attention, and spark an emotional connection almost instantaneously.

The Smart Toothbrush Experiment

Imagine you’re a parent of middle-school kids. A routine dentist visit reveals multiple cavities in both children. You’re faced with the possibility of an expensive dental bill unless you can get your kids to brush their teeth properly. You start researching solutions and discover a revolutionary product: a smart toothbrush with built-in AI technology.

This toothbrush does more than clean teeth. It tracks brushing habits, times quadrant coverage, and provides daily scores via a parent-accessible app. The challenge for us was to name this innovative product in a way that would resonate with parents and kids alike.

Testing the Names: A Tale of Two Systems

We presented parents with a variety of name options and asked them to rate these names on a traditional five-point Likert scale, measuring purchase intent and overall interest. At first glance, “Intelligent Toothbrush” emerged as the top-rated choice. It’s descriptive and highlights the product’s smart features—a seemingly perfect fit.

But we didn’t stop there. Inspired by Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow, we examined how parents reacted to the names instinctively. Using behavioral metrics, we tracked the speed and order of name selection. This approach revealed a surprising result: “Smart Mouth” dominated in terms of instant reaction and subconscious appeal.

The Psychology of System 1 Thinking

Kahneman’s concept of System 1 thinking explains why “Smart Mouth” outperformed “Intelligent Toothbrush” in our behavioral analysis. System 1 is the brain’s fast, automatic, and intuitive mode of thinking. It operates with minimal energy, relying on gut reactions rather than deliberate reasoning.

Parents who selected “Smart Mouth” did so quickly and instinctively. When asked why, their responses provided fascinating insights: Some parents appreciated the playful and edgy tone of “Smart Mouth,” believing it would appeal to their kids. Others noted that the name’s rebellious undertone might encourage compliance among children who resist brushing.

A few parents disliked the name, associating it with backtalk and defiance. However, this emotional reaction further validated the name’s ability to spark a connection. In contrast, “Intelligent Toothbrush” scored higher on the Likert scale because it was logical and descriptive. Yet, it lacked the emotional spark needed to capture attention instantly.

From Data to Decision: Recommending Smart Mouth

Ultimately, we recommended “Smart Mouth” as the final name for this product. Why? Because it connected emotionally and generated an instinctive reaction that “Intelligent Toothbrush” couldn’t match. A name that resonates emotionally has the power to drive consumer behavior—a critical factor in any branding strategy.

The Human Touch in Naming

This study underscores a vital truth: naming is both an art and a science. While AI excels at generating ideas and analyzing data, it cannot replicate the human ability to:

  • Feel the emotional weight of a name.
  • Recognize subtle cultural and linguistic nuances.
  • Predict subconscious reactions that influence decision-making.

AI works best when paired with human expertise. For us, it’s a brainstorming partner, not a decision-maker.

Tips for Using AI in Naming

If you’re leveraging AI for naming, here are a few tips to ensure success:

  • Use AI as a Starting Point
    Begin with AI-generated suggestions, but refine them through human creativity and intuition.
  • Avoid Over-Reliance on AI Screening
    Conduct thorough trademark and linguistic checks manually to avoid costly mistakes.
  • Test for Emotional Resonance
    Go beyond traditional research methods. Analyze subconscious reactions and behavioral metrics to find names that truly connect.
  • Balance Logic and Emotion
    Aim for names that evoke strong emotions while aligning with your brand’s message and values.

Transcription:

Mike Carr (00:06):

This is our first episode of 2025 for name Stormers, because we’ve been inundated playing with AI and all the different flavors. But there’s something we’ve learned about AI that I wanted to share with you today and provide actually an example. AI makes us all more human, and that actually is a very good thing when it comes to naming these LLMs, these GPTs, these AI agents, the generative ai, et cetera, they’re getting pretty darn good when it comes to creating names, right? With the right prompting, the right iterative approach, at least for us, they’re actually able to create names on par with some of our best creatives. More importantly, they’re able to give us a springboard and give us some directions that we wouldn’t have gone down without their help. But what they can’t do, and I don’t think what they ever can do is really assess which names are the names that you seriously consider, and which names should you not.

(01:11):

Now, some of them will say they can go out and do trademark searches and they can do linguistic searches, and we’ve tested that, and as of end of January, 2025, they still miss things. Their linguistic analysis doesn’t find everything. So there’s still some gaping holes between what they say they can do and what they can actually do. But the thing that I wanted to talk about is they can’t really assess which name is going to grab your attention and cut through that clutter almost without any conscious thought and get you to take that next step. A name really has to build a connection with your prospective customer very quickly for it to work the way you probably going to want it to work, regardless of how much money or how little money you have. So lemme take you through an example, and this is a study we actually conducted with parents, but it’s a fictitious example.

(02:08):

So you’re a parent of some kiddos and they’re middle school and you took ’em to the dentist, and guess what the dentist said, both your son and daughter have got multiple cavities. They’re clearly not brushing their teeth if you don’t get them to start brushing their teeth properly. Next time you come in here, you’re going to four figures. The dental bill is going to get into thousands. Oh my gosh, right? And so you go home and think, oh my God, what are we going to do? You start researching, how can I get my kids to brush their teeth better? And you find out that there’s this new toothbrush out, it’s a smart toothbrush, and it’s got some built-in technology, actually some AI technology. And I’ve got a picture on the screen right now of what this thing looks like. At least our mockup, if you’re just listening to this, I’ll describe it to you.

(02:55):

It’s a toothbrush that glows a little bit, and when you put it in your mouth, a timer comes on. And so it beeps once you’ve brushed so much in your upper right quadrant or your upper left quadrant, your lower left quadrant behind your teeth, in front of your teeth. So that two minutes is the total elapsed time. You get all eight quadrants of your mouth and it actually can track and keep score of how well your son or daughter did in brushing their teeth on a day by day basis. And there’s a little app so you as a parent can get a little report whenever you want it on who brushed their teeth appropriately and all this other kind of stuff. So it’s a very cool idea. And so we named this thing, we provided a bunch of names because one of the things we want to try to do is, okay, let’s let parents know that this is even out there and maybe engage them to try to give it a shot.

(03:46):

And so we tested these names and we showed a bunch of names on the screen. You can see that now if you’re watching the video and we’re looking for, the obvious question is, you want to know which name on this five point Likert scale is of greatest interest to you, right? It’s going to drive purchase intent, it’s going to grab your attention, very much so, not at all. And so they score these names. That’s the traditional way of doing research. But what we’re doing, this is what’s so interesting and what’s so important about this methodology, and it goes back to Daniel Kahneman’s book, thinking Fast and Slow, where he talks about the system one versus system two thinking. But basically, we as human beings have evolved to use less energy when we don’t need the energy. So the brain is the one organ in the body that uses the most energy for its weight.

(04:35):

And so rational thought, conscious thinking just burns tons of calories. So the default that we’ve evolved through over the ages is a lot of things never rise to the conscious thought level. They’re just dealt with subconsciously. It’s a reaction. You can’t even understand why you’re reacting that way necessarily. It’s just that quick. And that’s called System one. And that’s the way most folks evaluate names. They don’t think of a name as a great name, a crummy name. They just react to a name. So when we’re testing these names and we’re asking parents to evaluate these names on this five point scale, we’re not as interested in which names they score as top as much as we are. Which names do they react to instantly and select initially, and then they don’t mess with it. And so we’re monitoring the order of selection, the speed of selection, and some other metrics.

(05:36):

Now if you do this the traditional way, here’s the graph and the traditional X axis, linear scale, you can see all the names are sort of clustered together. And the one that’s sort of on the top is Intelligent Toothbrush. That’s the name we suggested. And sure enough, when parents think about it, well, this is a smart toothbrush with some AI technology built in intelligent toothbrush seems to be the obvious choice, right? It tells you exactly what it’s, but then when you look at their behavior, you look at their reaction on this next chart, the Y axis pops up, and that’s where we’re looking at that speed of response and that order of response all of a sudden another name blows up to the top, and that’s Smart Mouth. Now, we then had some verbatims in our research about why did they pick intelligent toothbrush? Why did they pick Smart Mouth and some other names?

(06:25):

And not everybody loves Smart Mouth, which is one reason it didn’t score as well on that positive axis as intelligent toothbrush. Intelligent toothbrush was actually rated by Parents is the best. Smart Mouth was a close second when you think about how did parents rate it. But Smart Mouth was way above the others when it came to that speed of reaction. And the Verbatims shed some interesting light there. Some parents did not like Smart Mouth. Why? Because their kids were already back talking to them. They already had a smart mouth and they didn’t want to encourage that kind of behavior with a toothbrush that had the name. But a lot of other parents said, you know what? That’s a name that I think my son or daughter would find cool and Hip. And for them it’s got an edge to it. It’s got a little bit of personality.

(07:18):

They want to be a little bit rebellious and not always do what mom and Dad asked them to do. And Smart Mouth sounds like something that they might want to try. And so those parents felt like it would increase compliance, that they wouldn’t have to harass their kids as much. If the toothbrush was called Smart Mouth, they thought it’d be sort of cool and hip versus a name like Intelligent Toothbrush that was just boring and the teens could have cared less about it. So we recommended going forward with Smart Mouth just based upon this research. And what it comes back to is to us Smart Mouth is a name that connects emotionally. It generates that instant reaction. You don’t necessarily even know why, but it’s a characteristic of being a true human. And it’s something that AI can’t necessarily pick up on. It’s that nuance.

(08:14):

It’s that subtle thinking that comes through with a name development. So in developing names, we certainly encourage everyone to use ai. It is a great brainstorming partner. We wouldn’t necessarily start there. It can sort of bias your thinking. And a lot of the names AI comes up with tend to be me too. They tend to be like all the other names already out there as opposed to breakthrough names. But it’s a great tool. It does fall short in a few areas. I mentioned a couple of those at the beginning. One was don’t rely upon it for trademark legal screening. It simply is not correct, and it’ll lead you down the wrong path based upon a lot of testing we’ve done. Don’t rely upon linguistic or cultural screening for profanities. It misses a ton of stuff. It doesn’t pick up on all the phonetic equivalencies. It doesn’t pick up on cultural nuances. And most importantly though, it can’t suss out which of the names is really the best name because it doesn’t understand the nuances and the subtleties of the human mind and how we react to things almost unconsciously. But that combination of a human with the AI seems to be the most productive path forward for us. Enjoy the rest of your week. Talk to you here again pretty soon. See you.

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