What People Name Their Robot Mowers (and How to Put It on the Mower)

Nobody names their push mower. Almost everybody names their robot. Here’s what they call it, why it happens, and how the name ends up printed on the front.

When we added a “name your mower” card to the lawn report in our free mapping tool, we expected a handful of people to fill it in. People took it more seriously than we did. A machine that lives outside, keeps its own schedule and sends you a text when it’s stuck is not a tool. It’s a roommate who mows. Roommates get names.

The names we hear

The puns. The suggestion chips in the tool are all puns — Mowana, Sir Mows-a-Lot, Mowzart, Grasszilla, Benedict Cutterbatch, Mowtown, Dandy Lion, The Grass Whisperer — because a chip is a lot easier to tap than a blank is to fill, and a bad pun is the fastest way to find out the family has a better one.

Movies. Edward Scissorhands is the one everybody thinks of first, and it’s the one that looks best in a gothic typeface.

Lawn Solo is the other one. We’re still waiting for a Terranox called Optimus Prime.

Pet names are the ones that tell you the mower has been fully adopted. One of our Navimow customers calls hers Stormy, and her review talks about putting him away for the winter and not being able to wait to get him started again. Mow Phasa, on the plate at the top of this post, got a lion and a paw print to go with the name.

The practical kind is the owner’s own name and phone number, and a line that says the mower is tracked. Less fun, and the smartest thing you can print on a machine that works unattended: a mower that wanders through a gap in the fence gets a phone call instead of a ride in someone’s truck. The Navimow app really does know where it is, and saying so on the front costs nothing.

Why it happens

Three things, as far as we can tell.

It has habits. It leaves at the same time every morning, comes home when it’s tired, and complains when it rains. Anything with habits gets a personality assigned to it within a week.

The kids do it. Often the name is decided before we’ve finished mounting the RTK antenna, by the youngest person in the house, and it is not negotiable.

It replaces a chore the owner resented. The relief shows up as affection. The mower that takes Saturday morning back gets treated better than the mower that took Saturday morning away.

How to name yours

In the tool, two places. Every lawn report has the name-your-mower card, with the suggestion chips and a dice button for more. The Name Tags room has a name field at the top, and the templates re-letter live as you type, which is a better way to audition a name than saying it out loud.

The name follows the mower everywhere after that: your report, your schedule, the emails we send, the chatbot. If you have two machines, each gets its own.

Putting the name on the mower

This is the part that’s new. The front of a Navimow X430, X450 or Terranox wears a decorative camera housing, a clip-on cover and a genuine Segway part. We take a fresh one, put it on our UV flatbed printer and print your design straight onto it. Not a sticker: the ink is cured onto the housing, the same way outdoor signs are made.

You design it yourself in the Name Tags room: six templates, six typefaces, colors, lawn-flavored shapes, a slogan, your phone number, your own uploaded art or logo. Save it, and the saved design is what we print. There’s no file to send. $120, fitted at your install or shipped to swap onto a mower you already run. Everything about the nameplate is on its own page, and how it’s made is the other post.

The honest part

Naming the mower is free and always will be. The plate is optional, and it doesn’t make the mower cut any better. It fits the X4 series and the Terranox because those are the machines with this housing; there’s no equivalent part for the LUBA, the Yarbo or the Lopkin yet, and we’ll say so the day there is.

Name yours → · Design the nameplate →