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Type “business name generator” into a search engine and you’ll discover a number of online tools that purport to help you come up with a catchy new company name. Use these automated tools, though, and you’ll find yourself lulled into a very limited set of naming options.

They’re excellent at combining two words into one or suggesting a second word for your one, then checking with just a click to see which domains are available. However, they offer just a fraction of the name possibilities that a human being can make up. And the human-generated options can be far fresher and more fitting than the computer-generated ones.

As proof, here are ten naming techniques humans can use that computers (so far) can’t.

Ten Naming Techniques Overlooked by Automated Generating Tools

1. Syllable Substitution. A clever naming method takes a known word and transforms it into a cute made-up word with a very different meaning by changing one syllable in it. For instance, we have the word “quintessence,” which we can modify into a sparkling name for financial software, Quantessence. Similarly, if we’re naming a deli that serves Jewish specialties, we can take the Yiddish “nosh” (which means “to snack”) and get Internoshional House. Such names are way beyond the reach of automated name generators.

2. Spelling Variants. Some years back, a search engine called Backrub was looking for a name implying multitudinous, nearly infinite search results. Name generation software contains only a minuscule percentage of the estimated half-million words recognized in the English language, and of those it “knows,” it can’t meaningfully play around with the language. Thus it would never have come up with Google, a misspelling of the obscure word “googol,” which means a 1 followed by 100 zeroes. Backrub renamed itself Google and hurtled into Internet history.

3. Fractured Sayings. Another highly recommended technique for generating interesting company or product names is listing popular sayings related to the subject matter and tweaking them. For naming financial software, we’d list the word “figures,” which might prompt the saying, “It figures.” Modifying that slightly, we’d get It All Figures for the name of the software. Ironically, software itself wouldn’t give us that solution.

4. Literary Allusions. Starbucks, the coffee chain, was named after the first mate of the Pequod in the novel Moby Dick. Likewise, anyone who’s ever read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel The Great Gatsby would smile hearing about an oceanside caf