Abstract and evocative font names chosen by an LLM
TL;DR: Analyzing over 10k random name generations for fonts on Mixfont yielded a surprisingly small set of names. Some of the most commonly generated "random" names contained words like Nocturne, Obsidian, Velvet, Wraith, and Vesper. These seem like words that AI really hones in on.
Whenever fonts are generated on Mixfont, we send a request to an LLM to generate a name for the font. When asking for these names, we use the following prompt in our server logic:
Create a font name for a font generation job.
Return only a creative complete font name with exactly {2 or 3} words.
The name should feel abstract, avant-garde, and evocative rather than literal or descriptive.
The first letter of the name should start with {a randomly selected A-Z letter}; the remaining words can start with any letter.
When it makes sense, include a type, style, or category label naturally in the name.
Font style prompt: {the user's font prompt}I thought it would be interesting to share some of the results from this prompt, based on over 10,000 real font generations on Mixfont.
Data collection
This prompt would generate 2-3 word names for each font. Examples of the full names would be "Quasar Veil Serif", "Eidolon Void Serif", "Wraith Grotesk", and "Vesper Nocturne". I took all of the full names and stripped off the last word. Then I wrote a script to break down the remaining words to look at the most common words used in the generated names.
More specifically, we looked at 10,328 font generations. After removing the final word, there were 5,319 unique names. The stripped names contained 16,130 word occurrences and 2,202 unique words. 42% of the names contained one word and 58% contained two words.
Most common names
Without further ado, here are the most common words used in the generated names:
1. Nocturne — 495 uses
2. Obsidian — 489 uses
3. Velvet — 487 uses
4. Wraith — 275 uses
5. Vesper — 271 uses
6. Liminal — 249 uses
7. Quasar — 248 uses
8. Void — 206 uses
9. Meridian — 196 uses
10. Sable — 181 uses
11. Yonder — 181 uses
12. Monolith — 167 uses
13. Kinetic — 166 uses
14. Umbra — 164 uses
15. Eidolon — 161 uses
16. Zephyr — 140 uses
17. Umbral — 131 uses
18. Rift - 130 uses
19. Veil - 129 uses
20. Aether - 117 uses
21. Feral - 115 uses
22. Eclipse - 114 uses
23. Vanta - 114 uses
24. Boreal - 107 uses
25. Orbit - 107 usesIf you're interested in the full list and breakdown, I've added the data to a Google Spreadsheet that is accessible here.
Most common names by letter
I also looked at the most common names by letter and got the following results for each specific letter in the alphabet.
A Aether 117 N Nocturne 495
B Boreal 107 O Obsidian 489
C Cinder 94 P Penumbral 67
D Dusk 65 Q Quasar 248
E Eidolon 161 R Rift 130
F Feral 115 S Sable 181
G Gossamer 90 T Thorn 71
H Helix 66 U Umbra 164
I Ivory 70 V Velvet 487
J Jade 80 W Wraith 275
K Kinetic 166 X Xenolith 90
L Liminal 249 Y Yonder 181
M Meridian 196 Z Zephyr 140In the original prompt, we pregenerate a letter that we pass to the LLM to force it to have more additional variety. The letters are chosen at complete random, but it's interesting that certain words have more tendency to be more common. For example, the letter "P" had relatively fewer repeats for the word Penumbral, while the letter "N" had a lot of repeats for the word "Nocturne".
Conclusion
After supporting tens of thousands of font generations on Mixfont its been interesting to observe the patterns in the LLM-generated names. There are many words that AI seems to like to gravitate to. I would be interested to hear if you have ideas on how to improve the prompt to get even more variety in the generated names. If you have any suggestions, feel free to reach out to me on X.