Name recommender

I had an interesting idea today about baby names. Or, for that matter, any name selection process at all. I had a look at some of the existing options and they seem to rely on either some kind of name sound index, looking up name meanings, or just pure random generation. All these things seem kind of clunky and unnecessary to me. A much better option would be to model name selection as a recommendation system, like Amazon or Netflix use to recommend products or movies.

You would just enter in any names you like or pick from a semi-random (selected for discriminativity) list. Then you just rate how much you like each name. Every name you rate goes into a sorted list, but also goes as an input into a recommendation engine which selects new names to show you. Your ratings also tune the recommendation system for everyone else. When you're done rating you have a premade list of names you like.

I think this would exploit a more reliable underlying similarity between names, and would avoid having to specify what type of name you're looking for. Boy name? Girl name? Dog name? Fictional character name? It doesn't really matter because those preferences would show up in how you rate the options you're given. It's kind of neat that a recommendation model could make a name choosing system that's not just better, but also simpler.

Another one of those areas where a really nice primitive can make a huge difference.