diff --git a/scrapy/commands/genspider.py b/scrapy/commands/genspider.py
index 39ee01367..79deb3ffb 100644
--- a/scrapy/commands/genspider.py
+++ b/scrapy/commands/genspider.py
@@ -56,6 +56,11 @@ class Command(ScrapyCommand):
 
         name, domain = args[0:2]
         module = sanitize_module_name(name)
+
+        if self.settings.get('BOT_NAME') == module:
+            print "Cannot create a spider with the same name as your project"
+            return
+
         try:
             spider = self.crawler.spiders.create(name)
         except KeyError:
diff --git a/scrapy/tests/test_commands.py b/scrapy/tests/test_commands.py
index 24fa072cc..205ebe8d1 100644
--- a/scrapy/tests/test_commands.py
+++ b/scrapy/tests/test_commands.py
@@ -112,6 +112,10 @@ class GenspiderCommandTest(CommandTest):
         self.assertEqual(0, self.call('genspider', '--dump=basic'))
         self.assertEqual(0, self.call('genspider', '-d', 'basic'))
 
+    def test_same_name_as_project(self):
+        self.assertEqual(2, self.call('genspider', self.project_name))
+        assert not exists(join(self.proj_mod_path, 'spiders', '%s.py' % self.project_name))
+
 
 class MiscCommandsTest(CommandTest):