Funny Names: Is That a Dog or Human Name? (Hilarious List!)
Okay, so the other day I was messing around with this idea: could I train a model to tell the difference between a dog's name and a human's name? Sounds kinda silly, right? But I was bored and it seemed like a fun little project.
First, I needed data. Lots of it. I scraped some websites that listed popular dog names – you know, the usuals like "Buddy," "Max," "Bella." Then I grabbed a bunch of common human names from, like, a baby name website. I made sure to get a good mix of male and female names for both.
Gathering the Names
- Dog Names: I focused on the really popular ones. Think "Rocky," "Daisy," that sort of thing.
- Human Names: I made sure to include a variety – from old-fashioned names like "Ethel" to more modern ones like "Liam."
Next up, I threw all this data into a simple spreadsheet. One column for the names, another to say whether it was a "dog" or "human" name. Nothing fancy.
After that, I whipped up a basic Python script. I used some library, can't remember the name, The point is I used library that helps with machine learning. I'm no expert, so I just followed a tutorial I found online. It was one of those "build your first classifier" type deals.
The Coding Part (Don't Ask Me for Details)
I basically fed my spreadsheet data into the model. I split the data into two parts: one for training the model, and one for testing it. This is, like, Machine Learning 101, so the model learns the patterns and then you see how well it learned.
The first few times, it was pretty bad. The model kept saying "Sarah" was a dog's name, which, no offense to any Sarahs who might have dogs, but it's usually a human name. So, I tweaked some settings, added more data, and ran it again. And again. And again.
Results (Surprisingly Okay!)
Eventually, it started getting better. Not perfect, mind you, but it could correctly identify most names. It still got tripped up on some of the more ambiguous names, like "Charlie" or "Sam" – those could go either way, really.
So, yeah, that's what I did. It was a silly little experiment, but it was fun to see how it worked. I'm not gonna, like, build a whole app around it, I can see the names by looking at the end, but it was a good way to kill a few hours and learn something new.
