New My Little Ponies, designed by neural network
The Kingdom of Equestria is inhabited by thousands of colorful, magical ponies, whose life cycle, socioeconomics, and biomechanics are best not investigated too closely. Their names are usually something like “Rainbow Dash” or “Diamond Tiara” or (my favorite because she’s totally a grad student pony): ‘Twilight Sparkle”.
Often the plot calls for crowd scenes (usually involving ponies in great peril), and I worry that some day the creators of My Little Pony will run out of names. In the spirit of being helpful, I decided to put a computer to the task of generating lots of new ponies.
I used a program called a character-level recurrent neural network (char-rnn), which looks at examples of text (Pokemon, or Harry Potter fan fiction, or even guinea pig names) and learns to imitate them. I gave the neural network more than 1,500 names from My Little Pony Friendship is Magic Wiki, and let it start learning.
Result: partial success.
It did come up with some pretty plausible-sounding ponies, certainly not as weird as some of the ponies that have already appeared on the show (such as Groucho Mark and Button Mash and Buzzard Hooffield).
Star Blueberry
Sprinkle Cherry Bolt
Berry Spy
Sweet Glints
Cheer Belle
Sunferry
Sunshine Star
Sweet Bolt
Cherry Curls
Mint Flower
Bright Seas
Flight Star
Plum Flower
Sweet Suns
Brash Clouds
Cheery Breath
Cloudy Daze
Big Blue
Brass Flare
Blue Chile
Coco Mane
Neon Brush
Strawberry Sun
Sugar Top
Cinnamon Mark
Glowberry
Amethyst Mist
The neural network also came up with some seriously tough-sounding ponies, ones that you would definitely want on your side when fighting giant killer cupcakes, or whatever the peril is this week.
Cold Sting
Scarline
Shoot Bolt
Sunder Bright
Dark Role
Sob Dancer
Sunsrot
Masked Rock
Roar
Starlich
Command Pony
Deader Pony
Flint Sting
Steel Roller
Dark Candy
Scarphore
Creep Well
Prince Still
Stare Rust
Crack Colder
Sanderlash
Bitter Star
But the neural network’s results weren’t all successful. It also came up with some ponies that probably wouldn’t be on the A-team.
Dunder Dort
Tardy Pony
Flunderlane
Flueberry Sherry
Marina Doof
Want Cone
Starf Dad
Star Star
Flurtershy
Starly Star
Mr. Atple
Pony Pony
Packy Pack
Pinky Swoll
Apple Apple
Dim McColt
Free Sing Fail
Poney Hoof
Tasting Spar
Dirky Flithers
Arple Robbler
Chest Star
Barp Moon
Mr. Wander
It also invented some ponies that are just plain weird.
Lilie Lice Billy Boon
Wootson
Mice Full
Fish Crest Suns Sun
Ramen Breek
Smarky Hondsarors
Blither Bon Persy
Belly Pony
String Heart
Swinkleshine
Flint Cream
Star Sandlime
Rocky Scooppony
Piemonk
String Punch
Apple Stork
Bunny Maze
Lilac Ruster
Winker-Moon
Charmy Vine
Swan Break
Wags Pine
Pearlicket
Nandy Quark
Firey Up
Tracklewock Packin
Flustershovel Aoetel Pakeecuand
Tapshine Sugar
Cloudsdalou
Sandy Apple
Mitten Splash
Silvermice
Butter Flash
Agar Swirl
Cheese Breeze
And a list of ponies you might want to avoid:
Clotter
Raspberry Turd
Blueberry Pants
Benny Sweat
Parpy Stink
Blue Cuss
Groan
Rear Pony
Lace Crunk
Rade Slime
Derdy Star
Swill Brick
Colona
Pocky Mire
Hoofed Snarch
Apple Ronch
Trowel Pony
Smanky Hank
Princess Sweat
Pony pictures created using General Zoi’s Pony Creator
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