Picking the perfect name for an AI assistant

Many startups are building AI assistants these days, and they often have to pick a name for their assistant. There are many factors to consider especially since voice input/output is more common these days, meaning users will likely have to say the name of the assistant at some point. We went through this naming process for our browser assistant a while back and eventually landed on "Genji" (https://www.genji.app)! I wanted to share the criteria we considered when deciding:

1. Easy and clear pronunciation - if the pronunciation is difficult or ambiguous, people will struggle to say it
2. Should have a distinct sound - this usually means multiple sharp consonant sounds, this is one of the reasons we landed on genji instead of genin which was another top choice
3. Mellifluous - should be pleasant to hear, this is the most subjective criteria
4. Text-to-Speech and Speech-to-Text should handle the word well - current AI voice technology actually pronounced Genji correctly, which was a nice surprise for us
5. Domain - make sure there’s a good domain available related to that name, we were able to snag genji.app
6. Trademark - make sure the name is not already trademarked in the AI tools category
7. Theme - this one is a bit of a bonus but if you can pick a theme around the name that can make marketing it much easier. We made Genji a ninja since he completes “missions” aka browser tasks for you. I see a bunch of wizard themed assistants these days since AI is often compared to magic.

Hopefully this serves as a good checklist for you all as well. Any other considerations you’d like to add? I’d honestly love to see what Amazon/Apple/Microsoft considered before landing on Alexa/Siri/Cortana.