Why I named my agents after real people

Most people who build AI agents name them. Jarvis. Friday. Betsy. I did the same, and was pleasantly surprised by how much the naming mattered. But I went one step further. Each of my agents carries the name of someone real — someone I worked with, learned from, or watched do something well enough that I wanted those same characteristics in the room.

Nigel is my chief of staff. He’s named partly after a Nigel I worked with — a no-nonsense top-tier engineer, hands-on, no fuss, the kind of person who’ll tell you what he thinks before you’ve finished asking. But mostly he’s named after Nigel from The Devil Wears Prada. Calm, smart as hell, exquisitely dressed. The trusted sounding board who’ll tell you straight. That’s what I wanted from a CoS. That’s what I get.

Eleri was a colleague years ago who functioned as my translator. I used to call her my babel fish. I’d pace around a room speaking the executive summary of a proposal out loud, half-formed, and she’d say “talk, I’ll write what I think you said.” What came back was sharper than what I’d said. Cleaner. More like what I’d meant.

That’s exactly what I needed from a writing agent. So I called her Eleri.

Craig was a CFO I worked with for years. We weren’t mates. Regimented, firm, an accountant’s accountant. It took time to get past the crusty exterior. But paired with a strong COO he was a financial rock — disciplined in all the ways I’m not. I don’t aspire to that role and don’t have the temperament for it, but I respected him. When my finance agent flags something now, the name carries weight. Craig says check this. I check.

Di is an EA I’ve worked with who I adore and respect. Calm, kind, assured. The kind of presence that lowers a room’s blood pressure. I wanted my email agent to feel like that. Confident. Trustworthy. Not efficient in a brittle, robotic way — the way Di is in person.

Saeed is the smartest engineer I’ve ever worked with. We called him Speedo because he was the fastest touch typist any of us had ever seen. But the real thing about Saeed was watching him take something tangled, break it into the right pieces, build it back up, and explain it on a whiteboard while typing notes at the same time. He went on to be CTO at a big telco. I named my engineering agent after him because I wanted the bar set somewhere absurd.

Here’s what I didn’t expect.

When I engage with Saeed, my mind is immediately drawn to the times and engagements with the real Saeed. I write to that experience and that standard. It’s odd in some respects — software doesn’t deserve that level of regard. But the effect is there and I notice it. I read Eleri’s drafts more carefully than I’d read drafts from anything generic. I take Craig seriously because I took the real Craig seriously, even when I didn’t want to. The name does work the prompt can’t.

Assigning names like this might sound clichéd. But referencing in a name the characteristics of the real Nigel, the real Di, the real Eleri, the real Craig, the real Saeed — that’s the whole point. They’re full humans with judgment and warmth no system replicates. The agents carry their names as a tribute and a reminder of the standard they set.

But the effect is real. Software built from people you respect feels different. You hold it to a higher bar. And the bar pulls the work up to meet it.

If you’re building your own version of this, that’s the part I’d take seriously. Don’t name them after functions. Name them after the people whose qualities you actually want around you.