Name That Baby! A Roundup of Baby Name Tools and Reader Advice About Naming Your Baby

Resource Swap

Parenting resource swap

Baby Name Voyager
Take a scientific approach to the art of naming your baby by analyzing graphs plotting baby name trends. Nine-and-a-half months may not be long enough for you to pour through all the data and cool tools. (Recommended by @kittenpie.)

Nameberry.com 
Nameberry.com is the brainchild of bestselling baby name books author Pamela Redmond Satron. The site allows you to search for names, browse baby names lists, and otherwise tap into the baby names buzz. (Recommended by @JenSinger.)

Baby's Named a Bad, Bad Thing: A Primer on Parent Cruelty
"Some parents-to-be have gone so far into the realm of baby-obsession they have lost track of the real, adult world. Their view is so skewed their only concerns are a) making their child "unique" and b) trying to keep the kid from being teased, often with terrible results."

What's your name? 
What's in a baby name? Plenty, as regular readers of Kristen Rushowy's celebration of unusual baby names can attest. Rushowy tells the story of the tiny little person behind the fascinating baby name.

Naming Your Children
Everyone has advice to offer on the naming of babies. "I have no children, and have never meaningfully contributed to the naming of another child. Nonetheless, I have devised a few simple rules for safely naming your kids," notes blogger and author Darren Barefoot.

The Call of the Child
Just say no to that baby name. "if you name your daughter Oprah, you're loading her down with a lot of baggage,'" warns Andy Meisler, author of What Not to Name Your Baby.

Why Your Baby's Name Will Sound Like Everyone Else's 
So much for thinking your baby name was special. Here's what the baby name scientists at Wired have to say: "The national nomenclature is transformed living room by living room as one frazzled couple after another makes a seemingly personal decision for underlying phonetic reasons they haven’t considered."

Parenting Grapevine

A roundup of parenting wisdom via parenting blogs and/or Twitter

On the Naming of Kids "When we were expecting Pumpkinpie, I started the naming process by giving Misterpie a list of five girl names that I loved and would be thrilled to have any one of. He immediately vetoed all five. I may or may not have told him he sucked." From @kittenpie.

The Great Skeet Shoot
In our house, the process of choosing a baby name goes through several painful and protracted phases. First, we pass through The Zorro Phase. This is where the Hubster, confident that he has many, many months to settle on a name, entertains himself by suggesting clearly outrageous and inappropriate names (Like Zorro. Or Gandalf. Or D'Artagnan. Or Clytemnestra, if it was a girl.) in an attempt to be funny. From @negativelane.

Laying Claim to the Baby Name
Here's a baby naming etiquette question you won't see asked (or answered) very many places. If two pregnant best friends both announce one after the other that they intend to name their babies Zakir Emmanuel, should one mom-to-be pick a new name? If so, which one? From @designhermomma.

Wonderful One
@ewiller wrote about her youngest's naming day (alternative to christening) and about his name: "Everyone here seems to think your name is Kale-um or Calleb. But you are our Callum." From @ewiller.

Thanks for all your contributions to this column. I really appreciate them. NOTE: If you had planned to recommend a baby naming resource or to share one of your own blog posts (or your own experiences) on this topic, don't worry. It's not too late. Simply post the details in the comment section below so that other parents can benefit from your wisdom on this topic.

Comments

[Cheryl Greene]

So sorry we missed the round up, but we have one to add as well -- Baby Name Finder at DrGreene.com -- http://bnf.drgreene.com/. What's different? We have a very cool tool that shows the CURRENT top names. The list is updated by parents as they name their children, so we don't have to wait until the end of the year to find out what the most popular names for the previous year were. This allows parents to avoid using up-and-coming popular names.

While you're there you can set up a poll of your top name choices and let your family and friends (or total strangers) vote on their favorite name for your child.

After the baby comes, log back in, let us know what you decided to name your baby and post a photo, too.

Of course the traditional baby name features are included, too.

[Ann Douglas]

Hi Cheryl -

Thanks for letting me know about the baby name tool at your site -- and for providing the URL.

I really appreciate it.

Ann