Anthropomorphism describes the tendency to assign human attributes, characteristics, motivations, intentions, or emotions to non-human entities, such as animals or inanimate objects. For instance, people perceive faces and facial expressions in car fronts by seeing the headlights as eyes and the grille as a mouth. There are several determinants and aspects that lead to anthropomorphism, including the need for social contact. In addition to an object’s appearance or movement, the naming of objects also plays an important role in this framework. In the study discussed here, we investigated whether naming – i.e., assigning an individualized, personal proper name to a specific object, device or appliance, such as naming a robot vacuum cleaner “Snuggles” or “Mr. Dusty” – leads to anthropomorphism independently of other factors. This was explored by means of an experiment using an online questionnaire. The effect of different ways of naming objects with regard to anthropomorphism was investigated. This was done using various questions about, for example, purchase and repair intentions, which people answered using a rating scale. The results of this study show that a self-chosen proper name had significantly higher values in terms of anthropomorphism than at least one other variant of naming (no name, company/brand name or pre-chosen proper name). These findings could be used in marketing, for example to increase product sales, but also to increase consumer referrals.