We recently shared the work of Janelle Shane, who trained a neural network on a database of route names from Joshua Tree (5,633) and Boulder, Colorado (4,527). The results were both amusing and baffling. We wondered how the generated names might differ if we provided Janelle with our much larger database of 432,000 route names, which we split by country.
A reminder of what a neural network is, for those who are unsure:
'A neural network is a type of computer program that learns by example, rather than being told exactly how to solve a problem. Based on thousands of examples of route names, it had to figure out the rules that let it generate more like them. At a low temperature* setting, it will generate names that it thinks are very quintessential - they'll end up a bit repetitive, but it will mostly be correct. At a higher temperature setting, it will be more daring when it generates names, going with less common sounds and phrases.'
* Temperature is a hyperparameter of LSTMs (and neural networks generally) used to control the randomness of predictions by scaling the logits before applying softmax...apparently...
We jokingly asked if this is the future of route naming for first ascensionists. James McHaffie was firm in his response...
Janelle duly fed the information to a neural network to produce a list. There's definitely a more British feel to the names created using our data. Sheep, tea and even midges make an appearance. Janelle guided us through the process. Check out her blog on this latest project here.
First, for the cleanest dataset possible, I extracted the countries that have mostly English-language route names (about 155k names once I removed duplicates and numbered routes) and now the neural net is churning out one plausible name after another.
The Stuff
Rocket Sheep
Ramp of Lies
Strangershine
Candy Storm
The Dog Sand
Holy Mess
Left Hand Monster
The Scratching One
The Angel's Crack
Suckstone Gully
The Folly Cloud
Burning Doll
Silver Milk
The Cat Bear
Block of Fred
The Limber
Element's Chimney
The Space Special
Bear Box
Smashworm
The Peacher
The Sun Mouse
The Bobble Block
The Rib (Stinkley)
Cry Problem 15
Scary Boulder Start
Solo Gallow Wall (STEXXY
The Sole and Elephant
Crag and Be Bloody
Midge Face
Seven Belly
Wine for the Great Free Man
I'm happy to report that some of the names were indeed even weirder than your typical route name.
You're Not Andrew
Master In Your Tea
Bean on the Pocket
Seven Dry Have Ship
No Rocks Egg
In Arms if the Lords
Parking Store Substance
Over a Wall No Mover
The Very Seven Steps
Robin Time and The Sheep
Captain Purple and Darkness
The Sun Tin's Not Your Winds
There are, of course, a whole category of names that are quite rude...
Joy's Crack
Mantlet Butt's Locket
Ring for A Spank
Finger It
The Slappy Slab
The Slippery Man
Shocker's Crack
Cold Beever
Silver Wally
Handride
More Sex
Sink of Bugger
Welly Will
Enter Crack
Anal The Light Black Straw
The Willy Wind
Middle Cock
The Willies of the Smith
Next, I trained the neural net on the entire database, just to see what it would make of the non-English names. It definitely struggled more this time - it reported much lower confidence in its results. But it did manage to become multilingual, generating names that were identifiably French, Spanish, or German (these were the most common languages other than English in the dataset, so these were mostly what it learned). Even if many of them didn't make much sense.
La Grimper - French: The 'to climb'
Cascade de l'ange - French: Angel Falls
De l'angle de la surplomb - French: From the angle of the overhang
Steines Schwein - German: Stone's pig
Sin Homble - Spanish: Without Homble
El Pollute - Spanish: The Pollute
Rapute de la vine - Romanian: Rapping of the coming
Danse ton de Barre - French: Dance tone of bar
Sometimes it did end up mixing up the languages, although not as often as I had expected. Maybe it was doing it much more with languages I was less familiar with, and I couldn't tell.
Via Les Rocks (Left - Low Shit Thing)
El Pantes du Petit
La Desire del pierra
Le Chins de Constant (Standing Pub)
El Lope du Pante
Sans Inside Droit
Via de la finger
Les l'Appolena
Placa de Carpet
The Schlang
Its brainpower was spread a bit thin, trying to remember rules for generating multiple languages at once. Unlike human brains, it definitely wasn't built for compartmentalizing multiple languages. This struggle had an effect on the quality of its English names, which actually I rather like.
Boulder 1, Problem the Gorge
Very Up
Fred birthday
Red 1
Blue Boulders Problem 1
No we and Cheese
The Spooning
The Corner Stand of The Little Heart
Cat of the Shallow
Serpent Mars
End Cow
Escapes of the Beach Brother
- SKILLS: Top Tips for Learning to Sport Climb Outdoors 22 Apr
- INTERVIEW: Albert Ok - The Speed Climbing Coach with a Global Athlete Team 17 Apr
- SKILLS: Top 10 Tips for Making the Move from Indoor to Outdoor Bouldering 24 Jan
- ARTICLE: International Mountain Day 2023 - Mountains & Climate Science at COP28 11 Dec, 2023
- ARTICLE: Did Downclimbing Apes help Evolve our Ultra-Mobile Human Arms? 5 Dec, 2023
- ARTICLE: Dàna - Scotland's Wild Places: Scottish Climbing on the BBC 10 Nov, 2023
- INTERVIEW: Loki's Mischief: Leo Houlding on his Return to Mount Asgard 23 Oct, 2023
- INTERVIEW: BMC CEO Paul Davies on GB Climbing 24 Aug, 2023
- ARTICLE: Paris 2024 Olympic Games: Sport Climbing Qualification and Scoring Explainer 26 Jul, 2023
- INTERVIEW: Malcolm Bass on Life after Stroke 8 Jun, 2023
Comments
Missed a trick with the Cat Bear graphic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binturong
Right, need to find a new Crag X and get to work now. Love those names.
Agreed, some are actually quite good.
They don't look much like route names to me.
But I'll definitely put a fiver on The Cat Bear to win the 14.15 at Uttoxeter.
In reply to UKC Articles
Many of these could solve the eternal problem of finding a band name that nobody's used before