Project naming

.gitignore

@@ -1,4 +1,5 @@
 __pycache__
+*.swp
 .vscode
 .history
 .coverage

brownie/exceptions.py

@@ -168,6 +168,9 @@ class ProjectAlreadyLoaded(Exception):
 class ProjectNotFound(Exception):
     pass
 
+class BadProjectName(Exception):
+    pass
+
 
 class CompilerError(Exception):
     def __init__(self, e: Type[psutil.Popen], compiler: str = "Compiler") -> None:

brownie/project/main.py

@@ -39,6 +39,7 @@
     PragmaError,
     ProjectAlreadyLoaded,
     ProjectNotFound,
+    BadProjectName,
 )
 from brownie.network import web3
 from brownie.network.contract import (
@@ -735,6 +736,8 @@ def load(project_path: Union[Path, str, None] = None, name: Optional[str] = None
         name = project_path.name
         if not name.lower().endswith("project"):
             name += " project"
+        if not name[0].isalpha():
+            raise BadProjectName("Project must start with an alphabetic character")
         name = "".join(i for i in name.title() if i.isalnum())
     if next((True for i in _loaded_projects if i._name == name), False):
         raise ProjectAlreadyLoaded("There is already a project loaded with this name")