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

The neural network also generated some ponies that would definitely not appear in a kid’s TV show - I’m not sure where it learned some of those words. If you want the unfit-to-print ponies, fill in your email here and I’ll send them to you.