Every good agent needs a name worth calling across the room. Pick a personality — friendly helper, boardroom professional, playful gremlin, or rogue — and spin. Tap to inspect, Hold the candidates, heart the hires onto your roster.
An AI agent's name sets the terms of every interaction it will ever have. Call it Biscuit and users will forgive its mistakes and tell it their problems. Call it Vector and they'll expect precision and get annoyed at small talk. Neither is wrong — but pick on purpose, because the name is the personality promise the agent has to keep.
Run the shout test: you'll say this name to your phone, your team, maybe your customers. Two syllables travel well, hard consonants sound competent, and anything you'll be embarrassed to say in a meeting should die on the wheel. When a name makes the agent's voice obvious in your head, heart it — the roster is forming.
It depends on the job. Human names feel warm and approachable, which suits assistants and companions; word-and-concept names (Atlas, Beacon) feel like tools, which suits professional and behind-the-scenes agents. Match the name to how visible the agent is.
If you're building a family of agents, one style with varied names reads as a team — a friendly Pip next to a friendly Momo. Mixing a rogue into customer-facing work is how support tickets are born.
They're starting points — before branding anything, check trademarks and existing products with the same name, especially in software. A quick search now beats a rename after launch.
Saying it feels good and hearing it once is enough to remember it. Short, distinct, and easy to spell after hearing — the same rules as usernames, with extra credit for a name your users will enjoy saying.