Automated Blend Naming Based on Human Creativity Examples

In this paper we investigate which principles people use when they name new things as results of blending. The aim is to uncover patterns with high creative potential and to use them for automated generation of names for new creations or phenomena. We collected examples with a web survey in which participants were asked to evaluate pictures of animals with blended anatomies from two different animals, and to provide their own names for blended creatures on the pictures. The blended animals served as a trigger of human creativity manifested through imaginative, humorous, surprising names collected in the survey. We studied how the features from the pictures reflected in the names, what are different complexity levels of lexical blend formation and how far in other realms subjects “travelled” to search for associations and metaphors used in the names. We used the findings to guide automated generation of names for the blends.