There’s a contact roller skate sport called roller derby where participants use pseudonyms when they play – and the rules state that each name must be unique. There are online databases of derby names so players can make sure their chosen name hasn’t been taken. Derby names are often mock-violent and/or sexy, but their most distinguishing feature is that most are based on puns. (The Wikipedia page has examples with the puns excruciatingly explained)
I learned all this when Lauren Barmore (aka Z Machine) sent me the full dataset of names from twoevils.org and derbyrollcall.com. She was one of several people who suggested I train a neural network on derby names. As with craft beers, coming up with a unique but clever name has become a challenge (there were more than 66k in the dataset she sent me), and she wondered if a neural network would be able to help generate new names.
The neural networks I train learn by example, and are good at mimicking the sounds and rhythms and common words of their input datasets (here, I used textgenrnn). With the derby names, it was the best at the “violence” category, although it sometimes forgot about the “playful” part.
Blood-Slug Shady Bruise Miss Carnage Darth Death Spank Bomb Vicious Killer Lil Hunter Fun Stabs Pain Pain The Danger Boom Storm Princess Damage Shredda Gore Fatal Strike Gore Storm Bruise Bruiser Rage Hatchet Battle of Bop Destroyer Smash JoJo The Murder Zog Mangler Bonnie Skullmall Princess Morgue Hey Pain Bear Rage Danger Boom Box The Fight Eye Command Screaming Boom Chaos
Most of the time, I couldn’t tell what category it was going for. At least these names aren’t taken.
The Comma Rude Professor Lox O’Horror Mayhem Chicken Triple Cookie Snow Warn Badger Bambi Eat-A-Skate Moon Mage Bruised Toast Show Cat Emma Sand Chaos Hubbles Lil Panter Duck Chains Shell Piper Secret Booty Cat Hand Stomps Scream Ass Ele Strawberry Pusher Butter Mack Dash Rumble Floobie Sauce Bang Whip Short Maim Shellbull Damage Bunny Farm Slayer Pug Mile Peach Atom Bog Quad It The Skater Slurrs. Buggg The Fusty Eyes Flubblestrack Nurfie Boops of Jenni Morgunn Grace Shrimp
It also generated some horrible names I would not recommend. (Unless, perhaps, you are a bombardier beetle.) These are the printable ones.
Butty Destroy Anus Attack Booty Butter Colon Boom Skillz Bud Crack Hell Poo Drop Nightmare Lump
You’ll notice I have not gotten to the largest category of derby names: the puns. It turns out this neural network does not understand puns AT ALL, and it’s incredibly painful when it tries.
Kim Stroyer Mary Splockings Ikra B. Up Aana Dastrophe Burning Sweet C. Bang Lucious Ally Mo Alotiboot Cheesella Anita WreckPIED Miss A. It Menace Ace ‘N’ Hardy Pan De Lucious Pitty Tea N. Little Shota Monster Dizard Danky Maul Frankin De Fight Silence Stroye La Vandastrophe Harry Stabble Sugar & Stranger Slamm-Tonic
It’s positively weird. They’re pun-shaped objects that contain no actual puns. Occasionally one of its puns alllmost works and I think that’s somehow even worse.
Prince Slam Lot Booty Count Dawn Pain Ferri Punchlime Boot Skateer The Sweet Roll Bone Damned Killer Strongulate
It also tried to do the “sexy” category, but it was pretty bad at it. From what I can tell, text-generating neural networks do not understand what humans find sexy. Again, these are the printable ones.
Body Sparkly Death Hot Sporty Darth Sugar Sanderwear Rotten Sassy Booty-Slammer Big Mighty Danger Sass Dirty Scream!
For the UNprintable ones, as well as a huge list of >500 unsorted derby names (most of which are terrible not-puns), enter your email here.
The other night husband and I were watching a documentary about the yeti where they were doing DNA analysis of samples of supposed yeti fur, and every one of them came back as bears.
Anyway, the next night we watched a thing about some pig man who is supposed to live in Vermont. People said it had claws and a pig nose but walked upright like a man. Now, I happen to know that sideshows used to shave bears and present them as pig men. So every piece of evidence they gave of this monster sounds to me like a bear with mange.
So now the running joke in our house is that everything is bears. Aliens? Bears. Loch Ness monster? Bear. Every cryptozoological mystery is just a very crafty bear.
Bears. They’re everywhere. Be wary. Anyone or anything could be a bear.
Fibromyangela 