Google Finally Explains Why It Chose The Name 'Nano Banana'

In mid-August, a mysterious Nano Banana AI image generator went viral, not because of its catchy name, but because of the AI-generated images testers kept posting online. Some believed Nano Banana, then in testing on LM Arena, was an unreleased Google model the company would soon unveil. By late August, Google unveiled Nano Banana, revealing its official name, Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, and making it widely available to users. Everyone kept calling it Nano Banana, and Google eventually adopted the name, using it everywhere the AI image generation model is available.

Until this week, Google never explained what Nano Banana meant, a name that made no sense in the grand scheme of Google AI things, where Gemini is the main brand. Some people may have assumed Nano Banana was a random placeholder name Google chose when it submitted the AI image generation model to LM Arena. It turns out that's exactly what happened. Google confirmed that the name was chosen arbitrarily in the middle of the night, and it wasn't the result of a carefully planned strategy. The name stuck as the model went viral and everyone kept using the Nano Banana moniker. In retrospect, the name choice was a stroke of late-night brilliance, as it gave the AI model an identity.

Gemini's group product manager, David Sharon, was the guest of Google's "Made By Google Podcast". He talked about Nano Banana, addressing the development phase, the LM Arena viral tests, its safety, and the future. The Nano Banana name came up, and Sharon explained how Google went about choosing the name. "So the official name is much more catchy: Gemini 2.5 Flash Image," Sharon joked. "But the name, the way Nano Banana was created, was by a PM named Nina. And when you submit a model anonymously to LM Arena, you need to give it a placeholder name. And I would love to tell you that a lot of thought and rigor went into the name Nano Banana, but the truth is that at 2:30 in the morning, Nina had a moment of brilliance to call the placeholder Nano Banana."

What's surprising in all of this is that Google never had a predetermined codename for the new AI image generation model that it would then use in places like LM Arena. Instead, it all came down to a moment of inspiration. In a way, Google is all of us, saving file names on computers for random things. But Google did it with a project that has been a massive hit with users since testing began.

Sharon explained that Google ended up adopting and "hugging" that name after the official launch of Gemini 2.5 Flash Image because people kept using the placeholder name instead of the official one. Google took it even further, adding a banana emoji in the Gemini app to signal that Nano Banana support is available to users. The short podcast episode (video above) is worth watching to learn more details about Nano Banana's brief history at Google.