Nov
Choosing a name for your child is a wonderful opportunity but it can be daunting. That’s why we developed Baby Name Brainstorm: an inspiring and fun way to explore your naming preferences and discover creative and unexpected name possibilities.
Why another baby name site?
Every new parent-to-be wants to find the perfect name for their impeding bundle of joy. Like many new parents, I turned to the internet in search of name ideas. I was first astonished by the number of baby name sites out there, but quickly disappointed in the general monotony I found in them.
Despite hours spent trawling through long lists of name potentials, few sites proved event remotely effective in actually meeting the task of suggesting names according to my personal preferences.
I decided there must be a better way to do it: That’s why I invented the brainstormer.
In choosing a name for my daughter, I wasn’t so much concerned with the first letter as with the general feel and style of the name: qualities that come from particular sounds, or cultural associations. I wanted to find a name that was fairly unique, had a strong personality, and an interesting or significant meaning.
The Baby Name Brainstorm is the initial fruit of my ruminations on name qualities. It helps you find names with the qualities you like, and suggests others you might never have thought of.
Screen shots
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- Each name in the graph is the centre of its own associative space
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- The Brainstormer finds name potentials through various associations such as 'sounds like'
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- The graph is animated and responds to your selections
Special thanks to Guy Davis
A very special thanks to Guy Davis for his generous contribution of baby name data to this site. Guy collected of an extensive database of name popularity drawn from the birth records of countries the world over. In addition to Guy’s own Baby Name Map project, this multi-national resource has now become the seed data for the Baby Name Brainstormer.
Thanks to Guy, our database is currently over 12,000 names strong.
Future plans
Currently the tool draws associations from the phonetic information in name spellings. This is just the beginning. We have a long list of features and insights to roll out over the coming weeks and months and we’re keen to hear you feedback on how to improve the usefulness of this tool.
