[HN Gopher] Show HN: My wife is pregnant; naturally I made a bab...
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: My wife is pregnant; naturally I made a baby-name app to
prepare
Author : hamaluik
Score : 700 points
Date : 2021-11-05 13:19 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nomdebebe.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (nomdebebe.app)
| JetSetWilly wrote:
| Back when my wife was pregnant I took the CSV export of baby name
| frequencies for last 10 years from the scottish National Records
| office (where we live) and loaded the lot into
| elasticsearch/kibana.
|
| It was quite good, for any candidate name you could see
| popularity as a whole, trends from year to year - and it would
| give you ideas. Coming up with names is easy but but coming up
| with names that both of you like is the difficult part.
| scns wrote:
| For my next child i will do it like my neighbours. Wait till it
| is born and wait till a name comes up.
| david422 wrote:
| You might want to remove similar characters from your codes to
| share. For instance, is the first character in your app
| screenshot a zero or an oh?
|
| Also standardizing on capitals IMO would help.
| hamaluik wrote:
| I considered it and maybe I still should, but ultimately I
| found when sending the sharing code I would just copy / paste
| it rather than type it in so for my needs it is fine. Wouldn't
| be very much work at all though so I should probably just stop
| being lazy!
| mynameisash wrote:
| There's something about picking the names for your kids that is
| just so fun and special. For those of you for whom this app may
| be relevant, I hope you have even half as much fun as my wife and
| I did picking names.
|
| Ever since my wife was little, she had a particular name chosen
| for her son. So when we got pregnant, we already knew what the
| boy name would be. But we had fun coming up with a girl name, and
| that fun was both serious fun imagining a world in which we'd
| have a Megan or a Lily or a Lydia or whatever, and it was also
| very playful and ridiculous. We would one-up each other with what
| we thought were ridiculous names that just don't make sense
| (given our language, culture, etc.).
|
| So then our son was born, and she got her wish for the name she's
| always wanted. Then when we got pregnant again, we got to go
| through the fun a second time around. One day, when my dad was
| over and was playing with our toddler, my wife and I were joking
| about silly names. "What about _X_ if it 's a girl? What about
| _Y_ if it 's a boy?" I got a call that night from my mom, very
| concerned.
|
| "Have... have you decided on baby names? ... What did you
| decide?" I told her the two names we had (seriously) decided on.
| "Oh. Your father thought he heard some _very bizarre_ names that
| you were thinking about. " We had to explain our little game to
| her so she understood the situation.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| My wife and I were trying to think of a middle name that my
| grandmother would approve of. We were heading back from Gatwick
| and hadn't come up with anything.
|
| Sighing, my wife said, "We need a sign."
|
| Just at that moment, we pulled into the London station, where a
| giant, 5 meter high sign announced "VICTORIA"...
| whimsicalism wrote:
| What would be the _very bizarre_ names warranting a call from
| your mom lol?
| epage wrote:
| Girl names are been relatively fun but boy names have been a
| challenge. The options feel limited if you want one that isn't
| overdone but isn't ... strange.
| seszett wrote:
| Despite the French name for the app, this seems to only use
| English names.
| hamaluik wrote:
| US-census names actually.
|
| As for the name of the app.. well names are hard -\\_(tsu)_/-
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| Maybe someone should do an app-name app.
| scandox wrote:
| There was a product I ran across in the noughties:
| Razorname.
|
| Its tag line was "So good it named itself".
|
| Doesn't seem to be around any more.
| lefrancais wrote:
| if you look for french names I've done this dashboard [1] that
| shows popularity of french names in France from 1900 to today.
| It is very slow to load, due to database loading and because
| heroku is free I guess. Github (french) repo is [2]
|
| [1]: https://dash-naissances.herokuapp.com/ [2]:
| https://github.com/Elie-B/dash-naissances
| disintegore wrote:
| Fork it, add a bunch of French given names and call it "nombre
| del bebe". Keep the cycle going.
| awslattery wrote:
| Congratulations! App looks great, and as someone who's looking
| forward to meeting our first little one in a few weeks, wish you
| and the wife all the best on your own journey.
| hamaluik wrote:
| Thanks, and congrats to you too!
| avrata wrote:
| Nice App! However as someone named "Robyn" I got very confused by
| the screenshot and the claims against tracking. Totally threw me
| for a loop. Is that a special name in any way for you?
| hamaluik wrote:
| Sorry for the mini heart-attack! No, to be honest to get that
| screenshot I just launched the app in an emulator, randomly
| swiped left and right a bunch of times, then took the shot. I
| think it is a nice name though :)
| derbOac wrote:
| Nice!
|
| I have to admit making a naming app has been on my mind since we
| had our child. I learned I really love naming and name issues in
| general, and really got into the name and naming community more
| than I thought.
|
| I think the reason I never got around to it was I didn't really
| know where to start, and wrestled with issues around open source
| versus private data, how to collect the data I needed to do what
| I wanted, and how to balance data retention against privacy
| issues. I think I was just thinking of bootstrapping from users
| but was never sure if that would work or if I could do it another
| way.
| Fnoord wrote:
| My wife and me didn't use a computer application. We used p&p and
| made a list of names we liked, then gave each other the list at a
| deathline date. Then we reviewed each other's list, if we had a
| name on both our lists it got a pre (this kind of happened with
| our first). Otherwise, marked any of the names the other person
| liked, and then it all started. What I mean with that, its
| multiple names. The name has to flow. It shouldn't be an
| offensive acronym. We want certain references (to our last name,
| and several family members). But all in all, its a matter of give
| and take. You win some, you lose some.
|
| I'm sure the main principle of the matching can be made in a
| Tinder-esque app (though I never used Tinder, so I am kind of
| guessing how it works). But I kind of liked the ease of handing
| out the lists and the discussions. I don't think an app can
| (easily) replace that, at least not fully automated. The manual
| stuff can be made in threads with replies etc.
|
| Just some words of advice: ensure you start when you know gender
| (can do gender reveal but don't wait too long), and take into
| account a child can come too early, so don't wait too long. Start
| proactively with the names. Even if the birth ends up in a
| disaster (it is possible) you still want to give him/her a name.
| After all, you knew him/her, especially the woman as she had the
| child inside her. Naming your child, even if its a miscarriage,
| helps with acceptance of the tragedy. In other words: it is not a
| lost effort.
| thom wrote:
| Ha, awesome. I went through the exact same thing of getting a bit
| stuck on names and trying to solve it algorithmically. My
| approach was using very simple Bayesian classifier to try and
| find sounds and spellings you liked.
|
| https://twitter.com/lemonwatcher/status/1286082683412582403
| foobarian wrote:
| Speaking of names is it really true than in Sweden you have to
| get a baby name approved by some government office? How strict is
| that in practice?
| V-2 wrote:
| I don't know about Sweden, but it is the case in my native
| Poland.
|
| In fact, I think it's much more common than full liberty in
| this regard.
|
| As for the level of strictness - it's always a bit arbitrary,
| and there are no fool-proof guidelines, nor a predefined
| whitelist.
|
| Generally speaking, however, the name cannot be ridiculous,
| humiliating, offensive, it must be in a full form (not
| affectionate) etc.
|
| Among the rejected ones there have been "Rambo" and "Joint".
|
| There were parents who tried "Wiedzmin" (Witcher), to no avail,
| but they succeeded eventually with a compromise, a slightly
| altered "Wiedzimin". Not a real name, but kinda sounds like it
| might be (sort of similar to Lithuanian Giedymin), and by
| itself not a popculture reference, which apparently was what
| the office considered frivolous/inappropriate.
| teddyh wrote:
| It's _sort of_ true. Strictly speaking, it's true, but it's
| mostly to prevent weird people from naming their kid "X AE
| A-12" or "Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116" (yes,
| really).
| ikornaselur wrote:
| Not sure about Sweden, but in Iceland there's a naming
| committee that has to approve names not already on the approved
| list.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_Naming_Committee
|
| It does look like there's a similar thing in Sweden though
| 1-more wrote:
| To add: I think this is to make sure the name can be declined
| into the noun cases necessary to make sentences in Icelandic.
| dagw wrote:
| _Speaking of names is it really true than in Sweden you have to
| get a baby name approved by some government office_
|
| Basically. The Swedish IRS is responsible for keeping the
| register of all Swedish citizens and they have the power to
| refuse to register a name. The main rule is you are not allowed
| to give a child a name that can be seen as provocative,
| insulting or has a high risk of causing the child problems or
| humiliation in the future. The core legal principal behind is
| that parents are not allowed to cause their children potential
| harm with their choice of name and since the child cannot act
| their own advocate in this matter, the State has to.
|
| Edit: The other type of name you are not allowed to give are
| names that are considered 'obvious' last names, as well as
| names that are primarily titles like "King", "Admiral" or
| "Captain".
|
| And I found this list of all names that have been rejected over
| the past few years: https://www.motherhood.se/bebis-och-
| smabarn/namn-man-inte-fa... (scroll down to "Fornamn som fatt
| avslag hos Skatteverket")
| nemo44x wrote:
| Wow, some names on the list seem innocuous. "Masen" for
| instance. A few others seem fine too.
|
| They would have a field day with a lot of names people give
| their kids in America. I went to school with kids with names
| like "Cadillac" which sounds like they wouldn't be allowed
| there.
| blntechie wrote:
| In Iceland, I believe one can't give the baby a last name not
| following the -son or -dottir format even if the parents are
| not Icelandic I believe.
|
| Atleast it was the case until few years back. Not sure it
| changed recently or they need to go through an approval
| process.
| dagw wrote:
| Apparently the workaround has been to 'move' to Denmark for a
| couple of days, have your child named and registered in your
| new home country, and then move back to Iceland.
| notdang wrote:
| how can you move to a different country with a newborn
| child without having any papers for that child?
| remram wrote:
| In France this goes in front of a judge. Names that seem
| harmful to the child won't be accepted.
|
| Famous occurrences are "Nutella" (ended up "Ella"), "Megane
| Renault" (a brand of car, ultimately accepted because it's old
| enough not to mean anything to kids), "Mohamed Merah" (same
| name as a terrorist who killed 7).
|
| Evidence shows that some parents are just too dumb to be
| trusted not to set their child up for ridicule and bullying.
| Fiahil wrote:
| Your app is fucking amazing.
|
| Would it be possible to filter names by regions or language as
| well as decades ?
| hamaluik wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| I _really_ wanted that in the app (and more filters besides),
| but the data source was the US Social Security administration
| (the easiest to access list of names I could find) [1], and it
| really only includes the number of people with a given name and
| sex for each year. To include the region / language would be a
| lot of data processing work that I sadly don't have time for.
|
| [1] https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/limits.html
| wohfab wrote:
| A way to "upload" your own name list would be an incredible
| feature. Whether it is a .csv or a plain .txt with one name
| per line.
| Fiahil wrote:
| If you really want it, you could create a github repo with an
| alphabetically-sorted CSV list of baby names (one file per
| first letter). Describe the expected format, add a CI for
| validation and we (the people from the internet) will fill it
| out for you, according to the old open-source style :)
|
| EDIT: Btw, here is the same file for France, with a different
| format, of course : https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/2540
| 004?sommaire=476726...
| ssalka wrote:
| Wish there was an option for "I'm not sure, show me this name
| again some other time"
| hamaluik wrote:
| My feelings on this is that if you're not sure, that's actually
| an immediate dislike.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| I'm unable to share on Android version 12 of a pixel 4a
| milesvp wrote:
| I too wrote code to help with picking baby names with each of my
| children. Popular but not too popular was a hard requirement when
| bisecting the SSN data base.
|
| One hard thing was not realizing how many variants there were of
| the name we picked for my daughter. We ended up picking a more
| popular name than we sort of intended.
|
| Naming twins was also extra hard because of the added requirement
| that the 2 names were of similar "stature" (or "coolness" or
| something hard to define).
|
| Congrats.
| msoad wrote:
| Has anyone named their child with an accent character like e in
| the US? Have you run into any issues? What your experience has
| been?
| bklyn11201 wrote:
| You will run into mountains of issues with USA systems if you
| insist on using the e. You will fill out physical paperwork at
| the hospital. How will it be translated by the typists and OCR?
| Passport matching against the airline information. Will it
| match? School enrollment: will all the username systems be
| ready for the UTF-8 character?
| seanc wrote:
| Relevant XKCD:
|
| https://xkcd.com/327
| remram wrote:
| Even big carriers with automated workflows get this wrong,
| e.g. put "Remi" in your Amazon address, get a confused UPS
| driver looking at a "RA(c)mi" label.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| Most states won't even allow you to give you child a name with
| a diacritical mark.
| rockinghigh wrote:
| It's not allowed in most US states. If you already have a name
| with an accent most companies and agencies will just remove it.
| [deleted]
| kerblang wrote:
| What, has everyone forgotten the legendary babynamewizard.com? It
| was one of the few java applets that succeeded. Seems to be still
| kicking, probably rewritten in javascript.
|
| https://www.babynamewizard.com/voyager#prefix=&sw=both&exact...
| rStar wrote:
| Nobody cares about stuff that's good on hacker news, they want
| some new bullshit that will allow themselves to compete to
| attach themselves to a revenue stream to enable them to get
| into Elizabeth Holmes country club. Babynamewizard is a pretty
| good example.
| Humdeee wrote:
| This would also work well as a pet or animal name generator. You
| could apply many more filters (Species -> breed -> colour ->
| gender)
|
| My SO and I acquired some new pets during covid for added company
| and we scoured through websites that were pretty plain, simply
| names as a list in bullet form. Your app is more fun,
| interactive, and memorable of an activity. People appreciate
| that!
| hamaluik wrote:
| Good idea, and would be easy enough to fork and do. Just need
| to find a list of pet names somewhere.
| VeninVidiaVicii wrote:
| I was halfway expecting to see a "This Baby Name Does Not Exist"
| generator.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| I would probably sanitize the db by ignoring the names from the
| last 20 years or so.
| hamaluik wrote:
| lol, you can filter those out in the app if so desired (my
| filters currently only show names popular before the 1930s).
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| We named each of our kids beginning with the letter M. My hope
| was that it would become ridiculous and my wife would want to
| stop having babies. Didn't work. She wants the 4th.
| imnicuhtine wrote:
| Good luck! We have a friend with 7 kids with all "C" names
| because they wanted the 7 C's
| nroviw wrote:
| One thing that would be cool is to see the name with initials
| (given family name/middle name) and also to check social
| media/email accounts and even domain names to see if you can get
| a unique handle for them based on a few variations ;) Those would
| make a great gift when they join the internet one day.
| hamaluik wrote:
| This will be our second kid, and at least for us figuring out a
| name that we both love is hard. There are literally tons of baby-
| name apps out there, most of them more fully-featured and
| polished than Nom de Bebe and you should probably use one of
| those. However a lot of them include a disturbing amount of
| tracking or for any number of reasons just didn't work for my
| wife and I (bugs, subscriptions, lack of names, etc). So in
| continuing the tradition of "An app can be a home-cooked meal"
| [1], I built my own for us to use. You're welcome to use it too.
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22332629
| [deleted]
| jdwyah wrote:
| Congrats! The mutual agreement part is fun stuff. And yay for
| overkill software! I 100% used my ForceRank.it tool to try to
| align on names. For us we wanted 2 middle names so there was
| real combinatorial explosion ;)
| koolba wrote:
| Why an app rather than a static site deployed to something free
| like GitHub pages?
|
| Could even have the data in a repo to accept pull requests for
| new names.
| zorked wrote:
| "Why isn't this a text file so that everybody can simply use
| their Unix shells to shuf -n 1 /usr/share/dict/baby-names".
| boogies wrote:
| Because you can already `shuf -n 1
| /usr/share/rig/fnames.idx` (or mnames for male ones) or
| `vis-menu /usr/share/rig/fnames.idx >> momlikednames.list`,
| and `cat {mom,dad}likednames.list | sort | uniq -d` to find
| names both parents like.
|
| `shuf /usr/share/dict/words` was how I picked my HN
| username.
| ape4 wrote:
| Why not... `head -c8 /dev/random | base64`
| agomez314 wrote:
| this is hilarious
| Someone wrote:
| Because everybody knows how trivial it is to curl/wget the
| list from https://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/limits.html,
| unzip it, etc.
|
| The list is biased. Not only does it only have U.S. births,
| but also only those where the individual has a Social
| Security Number. I wonder how many the latter rules out.
|
| For privacy, it also drops names that are rare, with fewer
| than 5 births in a given year.
|
| (App is open source, so it's easy to discover that's where
| the names come from. See https://github.com/hamaluik/nomdeb
| ebe/blob/main/app/NAMES.md)
| thatwasunusual wrote:
| This. Please don't create apps that shouldn't be apps.
| pjbeam wrote:
| Don't use apps you think shouldn't be apps? Making
| normative statements about something OP did for fun and
| shared with us is a bit odd.
| williamdclt wrote:
| Please do whatever the hell you want. There's a difference
| between asking a question, making a suggestion and shoving
| ideals down somebody's throat.
| [deleted]
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| But how do you know if it should be an app? It seems like
| we need a ShouldThisBeAnApp app where you can upload
| screenshots, descriptions, API diagrams, etc. and allow AI
| + community input to make the determination.
| GuardianCaveman wrote:
| No more apps! Only websites!
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| We'll see how this comment ages, in the VR meta future
| necovek wrote:
| There should be a ShouldThisBeAnApp website, and a
| ShouldThisBeAWebsite app :D
| fileeditview wrote:
| Make it a ShouldThisBeAMobileAppOrWebAppOrNativeApp
| service that has a native implementation on all these
| platforms.
| kingcharles wrote:
| What if you don't want an app and you just want to
| consume an API? I'm thinking a better name would be
| ShouldThisBeAMobileAppOrWebAppOrNativeAppOrAWebService.
| giarc wrote:
| A static site would remove many of the features that OP built
| (favourites, matching with partner, sorting).
| Drew_ wrote:
| You could do everything but collaboration using a static
| site and localStorage though Apple's support of
| localStorage is iffy now.
| dymk wrote:
| You just gave two reasons why it wouldn't work as a
| static site
| Drew_ wrote:
| That is indeed what I said
| zamadatix wrote:
| "Static site" is a bit of a misnomer, it refers to the
| webserver's view not the clients view. The client can still
| dynamically request chunks of information, favorite things,
| sorts things, save things between sessions, and form
| dynamic connections (though you'd need to point to a 3rd
| party signaling server for the WebRTC connection to come
| up).
|
| I.e. it's not the web page that is static rather the files
| to host the web page are static vs say being a php site
| dynamically generating responses based on
| user/session/request information.
| mmun wrote:
| I assume that the app keeps track of names that you've
| already rejected.
| aptxkid wrote:
| People have different skill sets. I bet there are engineers
| out there feeling more comfortable building a mobile app than
| a webapp.
| hamaluik wrote:
| Ultimately because I wanted an app.
|
| * I make enough web-based things for my job, and I enjoy
| developing in Flutter / Dart (what this was built in).
|
| * I'm never realistically going to be looking through names
| on a desktop; I use the app when I have a few minutes to kill
| in line or something where I can pull out my phone, decide on
| a few names, and then go back to what I was doing. I could
| build it as an offline web-app that gets saved to my device
| but then why not just build an app in the first place?
|
| * I like using SQL for retrieving data, and I don't want to
| have to jump through hoops to do so.
| PascalW wrote:
| Might be nice to deploy the Flutter app on the web too.
| Flutter web support is pretty decent now. SQLite on the web
| is probably going to be tricky though (sqflite doesn't
| support it).
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| > I use the app when I have a few minutes to kill in line
|
| You could track whether specific locations, or time of
| day/week, result in liking certain types of names. Version
| 2.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| It's a baby name generator, there's no need to track
| everything!
| wohfab wrote:
| They could also stand with their decision, to stick it to
| all the user apps, that track you to oblivion ;)
| throwawaygh wrote:
| Projects like this one are excellent for scratching an itch
| or learning a new platform. Low-pressure / "oh well"
| failure mode, fairly constrained scope, nothing too fancy,
| but enough of a "product" with utility to push you through
| the boring parts to the end.
|
| It's also interesting how this question shifted over time!
| It used to be that people would ask why you made a Perl CGI
| or PHP app when you could've just made a desktop app.
|
| ps: congrats on the new baby!
| hamaluik wrote:
| Exactly! The development actually languished for many
| months and I almost scrapped it. Only in the past week or
| two did I decide to revive it when I once again felt the
| need for it (9 months go by fast).
|
| Thanks!
| cossatot wrote:
| _9 months go by fast_
|
| For the father at least...
|
| Congrats!
| ballmerspeak wrote:
| Like others have said: great job. Usually there is a tradeoff
| of functional, aesthetics, and open source/no tracking where we
| only get 2 of the 3.
|
| EZ 5-star review for me.
| 5faulker wrote:
| Maybe there should be an app for the babies to change their
| name as they grow up as well.
| efsavage wrote:
| Nice, and congrats.
|
| I was actually in the process of writing an app when we were
| expecting, so I downloaded the US Census CSV of names to
| import, and when I perused the file I saw a couple names I
| liked, asked my wife, and we picked one before I ever had to
| write any code!
| hamaluik wrote:
| The dream!
|
| We went from trying 5 or 6 apps that we didn't really like,
| then downloading the CSV of names, then getting overwhelmed
| by all the names, the making the bone-headed decision to kill
| a bunch of time building an app instead of just slogging
| through things.
| bredren wrote:
| Congratulations! We had our first in June.
|
| Long before I considered having a child, I built the first baby
| names app for iPhone with my buddy Dave. [1]
|
| Believe it or not, we had a beef going with another app
| developer over who truly had the first / best baby names app.
| App game has been competitive since the get.
|
| [1] https://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/09/prweb1332494.htm
| hamaluik wrote:
| To you as well :)
|
| That's impressive! Around that time my brother was
| desperately trying to get me to build his app ideas so we
| could partner together. I dismissed him as I was busy
| focussing on school and thought there was no real money in
| mobile apps. I still regret it today..
| Humdeee wrote:
| Obvious question: who had the lower app id?
| bredren wrote:
| I'll have to look! I think it might have come down to who
| was live in the store first.
| jonplackett wrote:
| There's should be a 'Tinder' style option where you and partner
| both pick names you like and it only shows you the overlap.
| lexapro wrote:
| There already is:
|
| * https://apps.apple.com/us/app/babyname-find-it-
| together/id95...
|
| * https://apps.apple.com/us/app/kinder-find-baby-
| names/id10684...
| hamaluik wrote:
| There is. On the sharing screen there is a matches section
| that shows the intersection of your lists, sorted based on a
| combined sorting of your favourites.
|
| It does let you see your partners lists too however, so it's
| not completely hidden.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| I was scrolling through your app, looking at the names, and I
| was like "this is cool, but a popularity graph would be
| cooler." Then I started wondering why some names were blue or
| red, so I tapped one, and it brought up a popularity graph.
|
| Well done. You've officially made a baby name app that doesn't
| suck. Quite the opposite -- haha, I just noticed there's a dark
| mode too. Ok, between the custom dark mode and the hilarious
| name, this is the best damn baby name app on the planet.
|
| Thank you!
|
| Oh yeah, congrats on the kiddo. :)
|
| (A feature request: it'd be nice if the explore list could be
| filtered by decade. The decade filter doesn't seem to update it
| right now, only the swiper.)
| hamaluik wrote:
| Thank you so much! I had left the "explore" list completely
| unfiltered so you could always see all names, but it would be
| trivial to add a checkbox or something to apply the active
| filters; I'll definitely add that!
| Macuyiko wrote:
| Congrats! A friend of mine did the exact same thing and built
| namesilike.com. Looks very similar in fact but uses a machine
| learning model to help rank the names.
| yreg wrote:
| >didn't work for my wife and I (bugs, subscriptions...
|
| Subscription seems like a curious choice of business model for
| a child naming app.
|
| Congrats on the app.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| Congratulations on both the baby and the launch of the app!
|
| There's actually a need-gap for 'Suggest unique pronounceable
| baby names' posted on my problem validation platform[1].
|
| Although I'm not sure how the uniqueness metric could be added
| to app, You're welcomed to post Nom de Bebe there in the
| comments to reach out to those who need it.
|
| Edit: Since the main goal of a unique name seems to be email
| id, social media handle etc. Measuring availability of those
| from the selected name is actually possible.
|
| [1] https://needgap.com/problems/259-suggest-unique-
| pronounceabl...
| emodendroket wrote:
| I agree with the other guy about this not necessarily being
| desirable but you could repurpose pronounceable password
| generation like this:
| https://caseyjmorris.github.io/pronounceablePassword/
| jl6 wrote:
| Problem validation is a brilliant idea.
|
| Unique names though... there's a certain safety in numbers
| that a common name affords. A unique name is very easy to
| target in searches.
| henrikschroder wrote:
| It's also a dead give-away class marker of the lower
| classes.
|
| Also, the number of people who hate their "unique and
| quirky" name they got from their parents is much, much,
| much, much higher than the number of people who hate their
| normal name.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It's also a dead give-away class marker of the lower
| classes.
|
| Plenty of upper- and middle-class babies with unique, or
| at least unusual, names.
| carlmr wrote:
| Maybe he meant the name unique, not a unique name.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| And nobody ever understands you when you introduce
| yourself, or when they're trying to pronounce it from
| reading it.
|
| source: I have a very rare first name.
| andrewshadura wrote:
| Great app, however I'm not sure "pink for girls, blue for boys"
| should be the only colour combination. After all, just less
| than a hundred years ago the colours were reversed.
| pmarreck wrote:
| evidence for that last claim? because it is interesting
| sergers wrote:
| pink and blue were gender neutral.
|
| pink was common for men, being associated as a shade of red
| to show masculinity
|
| numerous articles and books on the subject (some other
| tidbits, FDR wore a dress when he was young as it was
| common for boys at the time until age 6/7)
|
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/025300117X
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/08/pink-
| wasnt...
|
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-did-
| girls-s...
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| feature requests -
|
| - initials with full name, in various orders (country
| differences), and
|
| - full name with given name, to see how it reads, sounds,
| feels.
| mbreese wrote:
| _> full name with given name, to see how it reads, sounds_
|
| This was a critical step when naming my kids. You really need
| to see how yelling the full name sounds. If it is too awkward
| or has syllables that don't fall together easily, that can
| make it difficult when you (eventually) need to yell at them
| for doing something stupid.
|
| Same with the first + middle combination -- those need to
| flow together well for occasions that require less than full
| yelling.
| sildur wrote:
| There was an app where each one of you had to left-swipe/right-
| swipe through a list of randomly selected names, and the app
| would tell you when both of you liked the same name.
| azalemeth wrote:
| Congratulations! Out of curiosity, what does your wife think of
| this?
| hamaluik wrote:
| Thanks! She mostly humours me and tries to keep the eye-
| rolling to a minimum. Her feedback drove most of the features
| and bug fixes and we're actively using it right now.
| hluska wrote:
| My daughter was almost named "to be determined". We went out
| for lunch one day and this woman at a table beside us was
| talking about her granddaughter. Her granddaughter sounded like
| a great kid and when she (finally) said her granddaughter's
| name, my partner and I gave each other a look. That was the
| name...
|
| I wish your app had existed then - it would have been easier
| than the grand email list o' names we shared with everyone even
| remotely related to us.
|
| But also, I wonder if that woman had any idea that she would
| inadvertently name my only child just by bragging about her
| grand baby. And in a sense, that gets to be your honour now.
| You built something that will be responsible for naming humans.
| That's truly profound.
|
| Great hack...:)
| cooperadymas wrote:
| You can't leave us hanging after a story like that :)
| hluska wrote:
| Lauren is five years old now. She started kindergarten in
| September. She loves numbers, math, reading, learning
| French and space. She is an absolutely wonderful little
| person, she is the love of my life and it is truly an
| honour being her dad.
| ufo wrote:
| Given my propensity for turning temporary names into
| permanent names, if this happened to me I'm fairly certain
| the baby would end up being named Toby.
| mtwittman wrote:
| First, congratulations, hamaluik. This especially made me smile
| because I went through a similar experience - in the early
| 2000s, inspired by kids' births I had the itch to evolve the
| manual process of a 'game' with our extended family--
| gathering/compiling their guesses at a name and other birth
| stats.
|
| So I designed a free (and no ads) web app[0] for me and so
| others could automat their own pools.
|
| It also has "bebe" in the app name :)
|
| Just as an historical point: There were just two other 'baby
| pool' type web apps on The Internet at the time (2003~2005).
| One of those two disappeared a few years ago. This was before
| conventional wisdom would be that facebook integration was a
| prerequisite for mass audience success for this kind of app. I
| was never interested in hitching my wagon to FB or any other
| third party. I'm happy it's an independent piece of old school
| web 1.5 / 2.0 that still kicking a decade and a half later. I
| hope your app has a long life as well.
|
| Anyway, cheers!
|
| [0] https://bebepool.com
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| TBH, opt-in statistics would be interesting, so you can say
| "Most popular baby name of 2021 was...".
|
| Although I guess you'll have a lot of bad data suffering from
| selection bias, it'll be the most popular name of the parents
| who used this app and chose to opt-in...
| fidesomnes wrote:
| no one cares, signed, HN.
| [deleted]
| ivolimmen wrote:
| My baby naming days are long in my past. I have two daughters of
| 14 and 12. Their names where a real challenge. My wife and I lost
| our first child. It would have been a boy. We had chosen for the
| name Roan. We where of course devastated. A part of me was also
| very sad for loosing the name. If the second would also be a boy
| we could no longer give it this beautiful name. We knew the
| second would become a girl and we wanted to include the name Roan
| in it. After really long puzzling we came to the name: Norah. It
| contains all letters or Roan and an added H. Something for her
| specifically. When we had our third we wanted to do this again.
| Norah was already at the daycare by then and played a lot with a
| child called Roos. Somehow we liked the combination but it did
| not contain all the letters or Roan. After some thinking we
| settled on Rosanne and we call her Roos (that's Rose in English).
| So her name does contain all the letters of Roan and extra.
|
| I like the idea but I am unable to have any more kids
|
| Congrats one your pregnancy and I wish you the best of luck.
| geoffbp wrote:
| My wife and I also lost our first, who was a boy at 23 weeks.
| It was an awful experience to say the least
| ivolimmen wrote:
| Forgot to mention that we had an extra rule when deciding on a
| name: it had to have a unique starting letters. I had a friend
| in highschool his parents and his siblings all had the same
| first letter. They thought it was fun but later on it because a
| privacy nightmare when post arrived...
| seFausto wrote:
| This is great for me right now. My wife is pregnant too, and she
| has gone through many names and for some reason, I'm not
| convinced on any name (I don't know why this is, something
| personal I believe).
| dbetteridge wrote:
| Something went wrong sharing your liked names list.
|
| S21 Ultra - Android 11
|
| Not sure what other info I can provide (I'm in the UK on talktalk
| broadband)
| metalforever wrote:
| man, why not spend time with your wife during this exciting time
| instead of this?
| hamaluik wrote:
| We both work from home and literally spend nearly 24 hours a
| day together. I may have coded it but not in a vacuum; she
| helped design and test it. Despite having many things in
| common, we also believe it is healthy to each have hobbies &
| interests that are separate.
| Minor49er wrote:
| A lot of the features being suggested below, such as origins,
| spellings, saving names, etc, are available on
| https://babynames.com/. However, they only have the site and not
| an app.
|
| Not trying to detract from the project. I was just curious if
| there was something that covered these that was already out there
| circa wrote:
| I hope Seven or Soda are both in the list!
| random3 wrote:
| 2 months too late. We went with our default / backup
| laingc wrote:
| Very nice! The baby name app we used worked on a Tinder-like
| swipe-right basis. At the end, you ended up with your "matches".
|
| But the best part about the app was the name - Kinder. (German
| for "children" and rhymes with Tinder)
| robbrown451 wrote:
| Needs more filters. I'd like ones that are based on popularity,
| so people (for instance) can aim for a name that is neither very
| popular or extremely rare. So many other things that could be
| filtered on.
|
| I personally would like one that allows you to pick them based on
| popularity in parts of the world (for instance I might want to
| view names that is more popular in Europe than in the US), or
| even one that lets you choose names with or without diacritics.
| (I wanted a name for my daughter that had a "heavy metal umlaut"
| like Zoe but the mom ruled it out, which was a good idea now that
| I'm not on a Mac and I realize how freaking hard it is to type
| that)
|
| I can think of many other suggestions (screenshots on your main
| page, and pick a chill color scheme as the default), but this is
| a pretty cool idea, and good luck.
| mosfets wrote:
| When the baby is finally old enough and ask "Dad/Mom, why did you
| name me as xxx?", and you answer "oh, it's from that app the dude
| on HN wrote.", imagine how would he/she feel XD
| vmception wrote:
| a) lie
|
| b) maybe that will be common enough by then
|
| c) does that really come up a lot? I don't think I ever asked
| why and don't think I would require a profound answer. I guess
| maybe if it wasn't a name that blended in I would have more
| questions and thoughts about it.
| epage wrote:
| > does that really come up a lot?
|
| I have. My middle name is both obscure in its sound and more
| obscure in its spelling.
| sharemywin wrote:
| is it like Tinder for baby names?
| hamaluik wrote:
| lol, I guess. I've never used Tinder but I suppose it is a
| decent comparison.
| giarc wrote:
| My wife and I used a similar app for our second and third
| baby. It was helpful and we only matched on one name for our
| second kid, and that is indeed her name.
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| There is an app called Kinder that is this. You and partner
| both swipe names independently and it lets you know of any
| matches. It actually serves a social function of removing the
| factor of who's initial suggestion the name is.
| zaik wrote:
| Do baby names swipe right on the parents?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Did you integrate BehindTheName?
| lawlorino wrote:
| I would love something like this that returns the intersection of
| names found in two cultures. E.g. I am British and my partner is
| Finnish, if/when we have kids we'll have to have to pick names
| that sound good in both languages.
|
| For this particular combination girl names aren't too rare but
| there's very few boy names that come to mind.
| seanc wrote:
| Believe it or not a good source of those is the Bible. Every
| language knows what do with them, either pronounce natively or
| a direct analogue; Ivan/John and so on.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| This depends on your concept of how names work. Some people
| (often dependent on native language of those people) think
| names should be translated, but to me they're more like a
| token than other words.
|
| If your name is Xinyi, your name in English is Xinyi, some
| people would disagree and say your name in English is Joy;
| whilst xinyi means joy (IIRC) that's not how names [should]
| work [IMO].
|
| This might relate in part to how we use a lot of foreign
| language words for names in UK English. Like how Charis
| (biblical Greek) is a different name to Grace (modern
| English) but d both derive from the same meaning.
|
| YMMV.
| seanc wrote:
| Yes, for sure, in the end you should call people what they
| want to be called. I know lots of Chinese people who chose
| an English name rather than put up with hearing their
| Chinese name horribly mangled all the time, and I know
| other Chinese people who prefer to go by their Chinese name
| and coach people how to say it properly. Or as close as we
| can get.
|
| In my case sometimes people have trouble with 'Sean' (Irish
| for John), so I just tell them to say whatever style of
| John they're most comfortable with. Since it's a biblical
| name they'll have heard John before in their own language
| and have access to something familiar.
|
| But mileage does vary indeed.
| ziga wrote:
| I had the same problem and built this:
| https://zigam.github.io/ginkgo/
| hamaluik wrote:
| That's a great idea! Though I think it would take an awful lot
| of data-munging to get there. Friends of ours struggled with
| this exact thing, but with English & French.
| mabub24 wrote:
| The trick with English and French names is to move outside of
| Anglo-Saxon sounding monosyllables towards more Anglo-Norman
| names.
|
| Henry (Henri), Michael (Michel), Oliver (Olivier), Julian
| (Jules), Anton (Antoine), Bernard (Benoit, ou seulment
| Bernard), Dominic (Dominique), Alexander (Alexandre), even
| William. The really French names, though, are going to be
| pretty rough if it's a dominantly English speaking enviro.
| It's rare to come across an English speaker named Guy or
| Guillame.
| o_____________o wrote:
| https://mixedname.com/
| hamaluik wrote:
| Perfect!
|
| I'm continually shocked at how many solutions there are in
| this whole baby-naming space. I think there's something so
| personal about it that especially drives people to do it for
| themselves.
| systemdave wrote:
| As a soon-to-be father in 3 months, this is great! My wife and I
| are using this as we speak :)
| TheMagicHorsey wrote:
| Flutter! Love it. I feel like Flutter today is like what Go was
| like in 2011. Its basically right on the cusp of being recognized
| as being the best programming tool for a specific use case. In
| Go's case it was making back-end services. In Flutter's case its
| building 2D client experiences (I say 2D, because I think Unity
| will probably have an edge in creating 3D experiences for a
| while).
| sleight42 wrote:
| Missed opportunity. You could've reached out to Heroku to give
| you several different haiku options. ;)
| sunpazed wrote:
| Congratulations and nice work! I build a baby-name webapp when we
| were expecting our second child a few years ago. Random rolls
| were fun and filter by rarity, etc
| http://peanutapp.herokuapp.com/
| kamikaz1k wrote:
| Thanks for making this!
|
| I am getting the "Something went wrong sharing your liked names
| list" when I click on the sharing tab.
|
| I wanna see the overlap between my partners app and mine.
| hamaluik wrote:
| Dang, I'm sorry about that.. any chance you can send me a
| screenshot / phone details? I unfortunately don't have a good
| way of debugging this (essentially I think that error implies
| that you can't reach the server for whatever reason). And
| looking at the server logs is telling me that I have some more
| work to do there :(
| Igelau wrote:
| I'll bet you're using this dataset:
| https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/baby-names-from-social-secu...
|
| I downloaded it recently to dig for names that start with vowels.
| I wound up loading it in a SQLite database.
|
| Nice work with the decade filter. I feel your pain with that one.
| I wound up dumping all the years from when "Nevaeh" spiked onward
| as a quick and dirty clean. This also cleared out the flood of
| -aidens and some awkward recent trends.
|
| After all that, my wife hated every name I suggested from my
| efforts :) Still a lot of fun to play with the data and watch how
| the trends change. Like you can find when "Ashley" declines as a
| male name and rises as a female name.
| aigo wrote:
| My dad said to me "don't give your boy one of those trendy new
| names, stick to something traditionally English" so I called him
| AEthelbert.
| tgv wrote:
| Sorry to hear that. Just 14, it must be hard to become a
| father.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| How is that is trending, compared to X AE A-12 ?
| wohfab wrote:
| They literally say, it is _not_ trending, but traditional.
| jacobolus wrote:
| I hope you spell it AEthelbriht like
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Entry_for_827_in_the_Angl...
| jboggan wrote:
| This is really fantastic work. When we were naming our baby last
| year we did a playoff bracket system with pen and paper, but this
| is so much more thorough. Great visual style as well.
| pmarreck wrote:
| Hah, we agonized over this just 4 months ago with our first kid,
| finally settling on "Samson", this app would have been a huge
| help!
| olliemath wrote:
| Very nice! We spent quite some time on this and aren't even
| having a kid.
|
| How did you implement the tournament? It feels very long when you
| have many names - almost like it's doing all N^2 pairs, or is
| there something smarter?
|
| EDIT: spelling
| wingspan wrote:
| This is fantastic, wish I had it before we had our fourth and
| final child. One piece of feedback: when I use the app with my
| thumb, the natural position for it to rest is right over the
| name. Consider moving the name more towards the center or top of
| the screen and making it possible to swipe anywhere in the top
| yellow area.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Haha, I guess this is what every programmer does when they have a
| kid. I wrote an ELO ranking program when I had my first kid:
| https://github.com/cortesoft/BabyNamer
|
| Give it a list of names, it presents pairs of names to voters who
| choose which they prefer of the two. Allows many people to work
| together to narrow down a name choice.
|
| I took the site down after a while because I didn't want to keep
| paying for it after both my kids were born.
|
| It worked ok, although the app basically just confirmed that we
| had clear favorites for our names.
| jones1618 wrote:
| I did something similar, although it was a Windows desktop app.
| Finding and picking names was easy. My wife and I found it hard
| to rank them so the app (like yours) showed two names (drawn
| from her list, my list and top 200 popular names) and you'd
| make a gut choice of favorite. After a few dozen rounds, clear
| winners would emerge. We could see the top 10 from each of our
| lists and easily spot overlaps. Since, I've used the same code
| to decide on vacation destinations and even what house to buy.
| It avoided a lot of marital disputes, for sure.
| hamaluik wrote:
| Awesome. I sincerely wish I found this before I decided to
| write my own, we definitely would have used it!
| axiom92 wrote:
| Congratulations! The app looks neat too.
|
| I worked on https://madaan.github.io/names/ a few years ago when
| my friends had a baby.
|
| The idea is slightly different (transferring Indian names to
| American names etc.), but the motivation was similar.
| hamaluik wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| That page is really interesting to me! I'm definitely going to
| spend some time this weekend going through it and learning all
| about it.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| It's funny that we call them "baby names" when it's more that
| this name will be with this human for much longer than their baby
| years. Maybe calling it a baby name pre conditions us to think of
| the name as applying to a baby rather than to an adult human.
| farmin wrote:
| Nice app. How do you like flutter? I am learning dart flutter now
| and it seems quite powerful and huge community growing around it
| is nice.
| fluf wrote:
| So cool, gonna use it right now! Thanks! Also, congrats for the
| baby and the app!
|
| Since everyone is asking for features: do you think you could add
| a filter for country, please?
| regus wrote:
| We recently had our first child and finding a name for him was
| extremely difficult. We tried using books and apps but they
| weren't that helpful.
|
| Part of the problem was that we wanted a name that would work in
| both english and spanish, and wasn't too popular or trendy.
|
| I found that I hated most boy names, especially the ones that are
| trendy today (Aiden, Jaiden, Zaiden).
|
| Feel free to name your kids whatever you want, but here is my
| advice to anyone who is trying to name a child:
|
| ---------
|
| 1. Do not tell anyone what the name will be before the child is
| born. They will try to talk you out of it.
|
| 2. If your family is not a native speaker of your language then
| present them with a list of a bunch of names that also includes
| the ones you want. Then ask them to pronounce all the names. That
| will let you know if your family will be able to accurately
| pronounce the name.
|
| 3. If you are going to give them a middle name make sure that
| their initials don't spell out something embarrassing like Carl
| Otis Winslow.
|
| 4. Do a google search of your child's first and last name so you
| don't accidentally name them after a serial killer or some other
| controversial person. Also google their initials so you don't
| accidentally name them after a company or a chemical.
|
| 5. Consider how their first name can used against them by other
| kids. Does it rhyme with something? Is there some famous
| fictional character with the same name?
|
| 6. Try to delay giving your child a name for as long as you can
| before leaving the hospital. This will give you time to decide
| which name best fits this person who is now in the world. (I
| thought I would name my son one thing, but decided that he didn't
| 'look' like some one with that name)
|
| 7. Do not leave the hospital without naming the child (unless you
| have a good reason to do this). I know some one who waited a
| month to name their child and they wouldn't recommend doing this.
|
| 8. Consider how popular the name is. Most of the names in the top
| 10 are popular for a reason, they tend to be good names, but do
| you want your kid to have a unique name, or just another kid
| among the other 10 Liams and Olivias in their class?
|
| 9. People are going to give your kid a nickname the instant they
| are born, whether you like it or not. Are you okay with people
| calling your kid Bobby, Danny, Mikey, etc? If not then consider a
| different name.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Kind of wish I had done a google search before choosing Kayode
| for my online persona.
|
| Kayode (no accent) is from Africa. I'm white. Oops. Also Lycaon
| is short for Lycaon pictus... African Wild Dog. Double oops on
| the first name.
| russdill wrote:
| If you choose a common name and your kid has an allergy or
| something, I guarantee you will pick him up from day care and
| he'll be eating snacks brought by the parent of one of the
| other children with the same first name.
| aspaviento wrote:
| > 3. If you are going to give them a middle name...
|
| Just don't do it. Nobody is going to use it and it will mess up
| when you have to fill forms.
| swilliamsio wrote:
| As someone with a middle name, it has never caused me any
| problem when filling out forms and the like.
| hamaluik wrote:
| My dad didn't have a middle name. In Canada that caused more
| problems than anything; forms would constantly be denied /
| sent back / whatever because whoever processed them would
| think he forgot to fully fill it out.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| This - please don't burden your child with a middle name or
| even worse, two middle names.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| We have used middle names to place our kids within their
| family, they are in some sense family names.
|
| Common uses of middle names in the UK include to give a child
| a name of a God-parent or other significant non-family
| person, or to record the mother's maiden name, or to give an
| alternative name a child can use (if they prefer that name)
| later in life without having to change their name, or to
| disambiguate (John Frederick Smith, son of John David Smith,
| son of John James Smith -- they might all go by John outside
| of the family and be Freddy, Dai, and Jim at home, for
| example).
|
| Middle names (especially unusual ones) make name collisions
| much less likely.
| quartz wrote:
| This is a good list! I do disagree with #8 and #9 though...
|
| #8: "just another kid among the other 10..." always seemed
| weird to me. There are tons of notable Peter's, John's, Anne's,
| and Olivia's in the world. The converse is of course the
| mistaken idea that a remarkable or unique name makes a
| remarkable or unique person and at least anecdotally in my life
| I've seen more young people find difficulty in the attention
| given to their uncommon name than I have people finding
| difficulty being unnoticed for having a common one.
|
| #9: As parents you actually have a ton of control over
| nicknames when the child is small. I know a number of Jonathans
| who don't go by Jon, Joshuas who don't go by Josh, Daniels who
| don't go by Danny, etc. You 100% can't manage the names people
| use to TEASE your child (as you addressed in earlier points)
| but you can teach your child and those around them that
| initially you and then ultimately your child does have
| ownership of how their name is used.
|
| Agree with the rest of your list, just wanted to give my 2c on
| those two!
| cooperadymas wrote:
| I wish that were remotely true. We continually have to ask
| people not to shorten our toddler's name from Jacqueline to
| Jac or JacJac, and I'm pretty confident that once we leave
| the room they go right back to Jac.
|
| I have a somewhat unusual name that's related to a common
| name. Think Jeremiah. Even though I have that as my email
| address and sign off as Jeremiah, people frequently reply to
| me as Jeremy or Jerry or even Jer.
|
| Yeah you sort of have ownership of your name, but people are
| still going to butcher it or abuse it if there's opportunity.
| prawn wrote:
| Agree on 9. We have a Fox and a Scout. If they get called
| Foxy or Scouty, they get politely asked not to early on
| before it becomes habit. That's worked without being
| overbearing.
| jeffwass wrote:
| Your list reminds me of this SNL skit of nearly 30 years ago :
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goPerp_BWvs
| comprev wrote:
| The impact of the name on the child/teen/adult is often
| overlooked. Great to see you've considered the negatives,
| especially how the name/initials could be used against them.
| com2kid wrote:
| > The impact of the name on the child/teen/adult is often
| overlooked.
|
| And confusing!
|
| Having my name as a kid was horrible! I was constantly
| harassed and made fun of for it.
|
| As an adult, it rocks! Close enough to other names to be
| familiar, but different enough to be memorable.
| donkarma wrote:
| On the contrary I would not mind if my child was named after a
| controversial figure due to the fact it would obscure people
| trying to find them
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Little Adolf is so cute!
| rStar wrote:
| So glad I don't have kids
| rStar wrote:
| Especially in the Bay Area. If you do, I recommend a move to
| some Pennsylvania farm country where you can have a good life
| and a good school district. No better life available.
| 30minAdayHN wrote:
| When we were deciding our kids names, we established some 'first
| principles'. I thought that simplified the process for us a lot.
| Of course, these principles are very subjective to the couple
| based on what they believe etc. Sharing hoping some might help
| others: 1. Names should be simple and should be pronounceable by
| anyone (we are from india and people can't just pronounce our
| names) 2. No association with anything religious or gods (we both
| are atheists) 3. No attributions to characteristics or features
| (it's common in indian names where the names mean something like
| one with beautiful eyes, one with great smile etc) 4. Names
| should end with vowel sounds (our mother tongue has sounds ending
| with vowel sounds. i heard it's the same with italian) 5. Avoid
| name bias and make sure people cannot guess ethnicity based on
| their first name 6. Have a middle name related to indian roots
|
| Quite interestingly, our super set became quite limited with just
| those 6 principles.
|
| My biggest take away is, there is no such thing as a beautiful
| name. When we think about names (at least in US), kid is not born
| yet. So we think about them as an independent thing. When as kid
| is born, they look so beautiful to you that, name naturally
| sounds beautiful to you. :)
| dumbfounder wrote:
| Maybe seed it with the user's genealogy?
| msc-post wrote:
| I found the listings and subcategories on Wikipedia for 'Given
| Names' to be a sufficient low-tech resource when surveying names.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29125195
| hirenj wrote:
| Back when I had to choose names for our kids, I needed to find
| names that were pronounceable in both Danish and Gujarati.
| Solving this involved taking names lists from both languages, and
| getting the phonemes for each name (based upon the language
| pronunciation). Following that it was a simple matter of finding
| the names with the shortest edit distances, so we could shortlist
| names that were familiar enough in each language.
|
| My wife ended up picking names off the top of her head that
| entirely coincidentally were part of the shortlist.
| madsohm wrote:
| I did the same for my girlfriend and I and preloaded it with all
| approved Danish names (42,000 in total) that we could then swipe
| through. I made it as a private web app, so that I didn't need to
| consider authentication.
| soheil wrote:
| I'd like to see the first baby born to the courage parents who
| used this to name their newborn
| https://www.thisworddoesnotexist.com/
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Add numerology analysis as a premium feature.
|
| A number can be assigned to every specific letter. You add them
| up, then again until it's just 1 digit. The digit has a meaning
| supposedly influencing the person destiny and personal traits a
| specific way.
|
| I don't mean this is true, but I know many people believe it is
| (or may be so why not) - I personally met many such people. This
| way you can attract some extra audience.
| tempestn wrote:
| Counter-point: some people may think this is BS to the extent
| that they'd give the app a pass after seeing that in the
| feature list.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Perhaps. A/B testing probably is necessary. I would try and
| some way emphasize the numerology part is just a game,
| entirely optional and doesn't interfere with the actual job
| the app does - suggesting names.
|
| Another, a more rational extra feature I can think of is
| providing a clue on how easy it is going to be for speakers
| of different languages to pronounce the name or to spell it
| in their alphabet.
|
| Some clue on the etymological meaning/history of the name and
| history of some notable people named this way, etymological
| counterparts in other languages, some fun facts like "how do
| you spell it in tengwar", statistical data on where and when
| was the name popular, cultural data like if it sounds close
| to some specific word in some specific language etc should
| probably also be there.
| heywherelogingo wrote:
| Hacker? News?
| privatdozent wrote:
| Congrats!
| grvdrm wrote:
| Have #2 on the way and a short list of names we like, but
| awesome! Good way to grab new suggestion in the case that one
| catches my attention more than the names we already like. Also,
| agree with the your comment elsewhere that this is something to
| do "when you have a few minutes to kill"
| [deleted]
| gred wrote:
| Nice. Very relatable, though my equivalent summary was slightly
| different: "My wife is pregnant; naturally I wrote a name
| database analysis tool to generate a name shortlist".
| Congratulations!
| ppierald wrote:
| I made one of these for Yahoo! Health in 2000. Naturally it was
| not an app. Good idea!
| mcast wrote:
| Are the list of names shuffled? Even adding a pseudo shuffle UI
| action would provide some good mental feedback to the user.
| gumby wrote:
| We had a problem (many years ago!) choosing a name all the
| various relatives could pronounce (between the two sides of the
| family there were half a dozen languages and no one person spoke
| them all). We had to throw away phonemes that not everyone could
| say and ended up with a single syllable name that everybody could
| at least pronounce one way or another.
|
| Another is "is this name a rude or funny word in one of these
| other languages?"
| josh_thurman wrote:
| This is fantastic - I hesitate to show it to my wife because it
| will induce baby fever.
|
| I have a feature request for a naming contract option between you
| and your partner.
|
| When you begin the name search you outline an agreement on key
| issues i.e.: -Veto rules -No Later Than Date for settling the
| name -Method(s) and timing by which you will release the name
| -Family name considerations
|
| In my experience with 5 kids it's these things that end up taking
| the joy out of naming.
|
| Congrats on the coming baby!
| kaftoy wrote:
| Dude, the notch on the phone on your website looks 20% larger,
| not smaller! /joke
| seanw444 wrote:
| Very cool. My only gripe with the UI is that when opening the
| popularity graph of a name, using the Android system-wide back
| button does not close the popularity graph. That would be handy.
| broabprobe wrote:
| ooh, I'm not even having a kid but this is fun to play around
| with!
|
| One feature that would be nice to see: adding names. I always
| thought it would be fun to name a kid Pickle but it's not in your
| list :)
|
| thanks for making this!
| voisin wrote:
| It would be great to be able to make a judgment on all related
| names, like thumbs down or heart "William", "Willy", "Will" all
| at once.
|
| Or to filter names by ethnic group?
|
| Overall it is fantastic but I find 100k names to be daunting!
| indemnity wrote:
| Don't listen to the critics, well executed, and thanks for
| keeping it clean and focused.
|
| Would have loved this app when we were looking, but after two
| kids I hope we won't need to use it ;)
| learc83 wrote:
| When my wife and I were picking names for our son earlier this
| year, I pulled down a list of the top 1,000 names from the social
| security office. I removed the top 20, and then we kept making
| passes removing more names until we were down to the winner.
|
| I called it name whittling. It was surprisingly easy to whittle
| the list down to 50 names or so.
| jl6 wrote:
| Fantastic work.
|
| Can you add a feature to do cache invalidation too?
| Amorymeltzer wrote:
| We just had our second a few weeks ago, and to figure out some
| names, we each got a big list of "kind of like this name,"
| totally casual and noncommittal, and combined them. We then used
| a little Elo[1] rater script I whipped up to compare items, it
| was fun! Once you get a short list there's no good algorithm to
| figure it out, but using Elo we both found names we loved that we
| never would have thought about, and had a fun time doing so.
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system
| hamaluik wrote:
| Congrats! Elo rating is a good idea for sorting.. I just
| implemented an insertion sort to help rank names which works
| but also feels a bit awkward.
| remram wrote:
| Your sort has a way higher complexity than required, in terms
| of comparisons. It will present the user with way more pairs
| than the optimal system would, which will make it very hard
| to sort through a longer list.
|
| You might want to use a merge insertion sort instead. See
| https://stackoverflow.com/a/53979250/711380
|
| Of course this only works if you assume the order is total,
| which is actually a good assumption unless multiple people
| are contributing to the same ranking (in that case use ELO).
| hamaluik wrote:
| Hmm, that is a good idea; thanks. I don't have a CS degree
| so this is one of those areas where I don't know what I
| don't know.
| remram wrote:
| On an intuitive level, if I just said I prefer "Alice" to
| "Anna", and "Anna" to "Mary", it should not ask whether I
| prefer "Alice" to "Mary".
|
| In practice that seems a little bit difficult and I was
| hoping someone would jump with the optimal solution.
| LegitShady wrote:
| Pathological but productive.
| hamaluik wrote:
| lol, that describes me a little too well..
| LegitShady wrote:
| There's a certain kind of personality that says "I have a
| problem someone else must have that too - I'll make an app"
|
| The productive part comes when you actually finish the app
| jedimastert wrote:
| My wife and I have a game to spell out things with baby name
| initials (our last name starts with a T, which helps). We aren't
| tied to the idea, but it's sort of like an improv game, where
| constraints get the ideas flowing. We've learned a fair bit about
| what each of us do and don't like in a game
| hamaluik wrote:
| That sounds fun. Mostly we try to avoid names that would cause
| an unfortunate acronym, which definitely takes a few of the
| names we like off the list.
| disintegore wrote:
| I've always loved the term "baby name". Makes it seem like you
| grow out of it eventually and have to switch to an adult name
| like "Roger" or "Raymond".
| tasogare wrote:
| That used to be the case in some culture, like the Chinese one.
| wreath wrote:
| When I was a child I used to ask my mother what her name was
| when she was a child too. I just couldn't imagine/believe
| someone would have that/her name as and be 10 years old at the
| same time.
|
| I don't really like my name and I think adults should be able
| to choose their names without big hassle. Not choosing where
| you're born is already too much of a control-giveup haha
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| This just seems like we'd be fixing a cultural issue with a
| band aid solution. The reason changing a name is difficult
| shouldn't be the bureaucracy, but the fact that you exist in
| an interpersonal network of individuals indexed by name.
|
| > I think adults should've able to choose their name without
| a big hassle
|
| So my question for you would be: what hassle are you
| referring to? The cultural norm or the bureaucracy/paperwork?
|
| In either case, what would a solution look like?
| usui wrote:
| Same! I always thought I was alone in feeling this way. When I
| first heard the phrase "baby names", I first understood it as
| that: a name used for people while they are still a baby. I was
| confused for many years until I realized that it was just a
| query for popular names for your newborn. I feel there should
| be a more descriptive phrase for it, or simply refer to it as
| name popularity. I'm not familiar with a culture where people
| legally change their name as they get older, but I don't think
| it would make a statistical dent. Almost all people keep the
| name they are born with, correct?
| lamroger wrote:
| hahaha
| GrinningFool wrote:
| In a way - perhaps? If someone doesn't like their name they can
| change it when they reach adulthood (at least in the US)
| [deleted]
| hamaluik wrote:
| Haha, I love it! Our first kid was code-named "baby thunder"
| before being born (we delayed telling some friends so we
| wouldn't steal their "baby thunder"). The name stuck around for
| a couple months after she was born before we trailed off using
| it, so it really was her "baby name" :p
| robotresearcher wrote:
| We did a similar thing. Early on, our toddler proposed the
| name Bin-ban for his upcoming sister, and it stuck.
|
| We have a lovely video of the toddler explaining to Grannie a
| few hours after the birth 'her name is Bin-ban'. 'Oh <long
| pause>, yes, but she has a real name'.
|
| We called her Bin-ban for a few more weeks until she sort of
| grew into her 'real' name. That beautiful little original
| name is a very fond memory for us.
| prawn wrote:
| Our son proposed "Caterpillar Pop" for his looming sister
| which I always liked. "Mustard" was the codename for
| another unborn child (my sister's, I think).
| epage wrote:
| Ours was Stardust, tying into part of their name that is a
| constellation name.
| privacyonsec wrote:
| congrats, maybe you can use qr-code scanning for linking instead
| of sharing code ?
| hamaluik wrote:
| That's a really great idea, I'll add that for the next release
| for sure! Thanks!
| gus_massa wrote:
| > _Over 110,000 names from over a century of records_
|
| Does it do something smart to filter the names? Because showing
| all of them is too much.
|
| Is there a third option or only heart vs thumb-down?
|
| Is there an option to show variants of spelling? All my children
| have names with the traditional Spanish spelling [Hi from
| Argentina!] but here it's somewhat common to use the English or
| Italian spelling too.
| hamaluik wrote:
| You can filter names by first letter, sex, and decade of
| popularity, as well as limit to the most popular N names in
| that list.
|
| No, only like / dislike. This was intentional for me, another
| app we tried had a "maybe" list that just filled up with names
| that I would never realistically go for.
|
| No easy way to show variants of spelling. Not something I
| needed, but I could definitely see that being helpful for
| others, and would be a good feature to add.
| zebnyc wrote:
| Would be interesting if you could filter to include / exclude
| similar sounding names / syllables. When we had our kid, I
| had to come up with names and my wife would try to "break
| them"(think of every way in which some "mean kids" might
| twist the name to something else).
|
| For e.g. when I suggested Dakshith which is a very popular
| name in India, she countered "Do you really want other kids
| to call him "shi*?"
| Argher wrote:
| Love the app, seems nicely functional - as feedback/bug
| report?, it doesn't look like the "Sex" filter works, at
| least not for the "Explore" mode.
| hamaluik wrote:
| Yea I purposefully made the explore mode keep al the names.
| Next release I'll make sure to add a toggle on whether to
| apply the filters or not because in hindsight this is
| confusing.
| yummypaint wrote:
| I would love to be able to filter by number of syllables.
| Probably not a trivial thing though
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Does it include "X AE A-12"?
| pie42000 wrote:
| Very weird design choices. The like/dislike buttons are super
| small, the Names rated/names remaining counter takes up half the
| screen and seems like it should be at most 10-20% of the screen.
| Names are too small. BB complains about app design all the time
| and then creates these monstrosities
| asymptotic wrote:
| Congratulations! I did the exact same thing; made an app to help
| name my first child.
|
| I've slowly developed a method which incorporates 1) culture, 2)
| popularity in different countries, and 3) pronunciation of names
| and attempts to recommend you names based on names you like. It
| kind of works, it's taken a lot of tuning to make it output
| something sensible. It's specifically designed to attempt to
| combine cultures together, which is a top request from customers
| I identified.
|
| I've been working on releasing the app for a while. If you're
| interested in helping me test it before its release this month
| please feel free to sign up here:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/namenerds/comments/qge6t9/im_lookin...
|
| I will also look at this thread's comments closely before
| launching.
| [deleted]
| icedistilled wrote:
| Tomorrow on hacker news I expect to see a "This-name-does-not-
| exist" app. Make it happen.
| 123pie123 wrote:
| did you know that ...
|
| >In England, Northern Ireland and Wales, the law requires you to
| register a birth within 42 days (GOV.UK, 2019a). In Scotland, a
| birth needs to be registered within 21 days
|
| We couldn't think of a name that we both liked and went well over
| the 42 days to register the name, we got a court order around 120
| days.
|
| Jokingly I said to my partner you're the one that'll be going to
| court not me. She replied that's ok I'll name the baby after the
| first person I see.
|
| We settled on a name and registered the (not very new) baby the
| next morning
| reaperducer wrote:
| _> In England, Northern Ireland and Wales, the law requires you
| to register a birth within 42 days (GOV.UK, 2019a). In
| Scotland, a birth needs to be registered within 21 days_
|
| My parents would have been in jail.
|
| They were both Old World immigrants and very traditional
| (though, from different countries). So I wasn't named until I
| was almost a year old.
|
| Also I didn't have a haircut until after 1yo, supposedly a
| cultural tradition. Didn't wear pants until I was 2yo, again
| supposed to be a cultural thing.
|
| Here's the one that blows a lot of young people's minds: I
| didn't have a Social Security number until I was 17. And the
| only reason I got one was so I could get a passport.
|
| These days you can't function, even as a child, without a
| Social Security number. Back then, you were still considered a
| human being and an American citizen even if you weren't
| constantly enumerated, tabulated, and tracked.
| conductr wrote:
| Nice! I needed this a few years ago. I was browsing the baby name
| sides, comparing notes with my wife, etc. Thinking all along, I
| wish there was a tinder-for-baby-names that would show us our
| mutual matches. Kudos on getting it done!!
| cdubzzz wrote:
| Shameless plug for my caregiver support app Baby Buddy[0].
| Previously a Show HN[1] as well. The app turned four years old
| not long ago (as did our first child!) and I'm still enjoying
| hacking away on it.
|
| Give it a try if you are in to self-hosting and over-engineering
| (your child?).
|
| [0] https://github.com/babybuddy/babybuddy
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15558057
| antihero wrote:
| This looks lush. One request - a filter for genderless names
| would be amazing. I have no idea what my kids will want to
| identify as so having something gender neutral seems like a gift.
| hamaluik wrote:
| That's a good idea and should be fairly easy to add. You can
| currently disable the colour-based gendering of the app if
| desired but your suggestion would be a lot more useful.
| gbronner wrote:
| I did something like this with jupyter and the census records.
|
| I added filters for min and max popularity, gender ratio,
| scrabble score, number of syllables, length, etc.
| jdmichal wrote:
| I love that you implemented scrabble score. Not even legal to
| play, but fun none the less!
| hamaluik wrote:
| That sounds awesome!
| z2 wrote:
| I did almost the exact same thing (minus scrabble score!), and
| am convinced there's at least a few interesting blog posts or
| even research papers left that can come from these records.
|
| Maybe because it was all too contrived, it fell by the wayside
| when my wife came across something she really liked in a poem,
| and we basically used the closest name that embodied the
| phrase.
|
| For the next child I'll probably just try asking a transformer
| model.
| MangezBien wrote:
| My wife is also pregnant and this is the first baby-name app I
| don't hate.
| hamaluik wrote:
| Congrats! And thanks!
| steren wrote:
| Great idea, is there a web version of the app?
| hamaluik wrote:
| No.. but its built using Dart / Flutter so it may be possible
| to publish as a web version (though I think you'd run into
| issues with the database backend).
| galang wrote:
| Brilliant! Congratulations to you and your wife
| hamaluik wrote:
| Thanks!
| ensignavenger wrote:
| I see that is is Open Source, which is awesome. Would you
| consider distributing it on fdroid?
| hamaluik wrote:
| Yes! I still haven't found time to do so for my other app (Time
| Cop), but I should probably just get my butt in gear and figure
| it out.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| Thank you, I downloaded both apps to try them out- don't plan
| on having a baby anytime soon, though :)
|
| And thank you for using an Open Source license!
|
| I always look for utility apps like these in fdroid first, so
| I know if I were just out looking for something like this, I
| would be more likely to download it versus another app if it
| were in fdroid!
| cunningfatalist wrote:
| Congratulations! :)
| hamaluik wrote:
| Thanks!
| vmception wrote:
| Reminder: baby names are adult names.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Nice - I got our daughter's name at the 27th try.
|
| Our method was to wait until she started kicking in the womb and
| pick the name based on the consistent intensity of kicks when it
| was said out loud.
|
| As a control we used common words. Out of them "Cockroach" got
| the most enthusiastic response.
| jdright wrote:
| Very nice app. A few suggestions after using it a bit:
|
| Remove names: Unknown, Unnamed, Unk and Unborn (Some of these
| have dupes with typos)
|
| Add an option to not show twice names that are unisex, they
| should show only once but maybe with a multi colored card. This
| is useful for two things: 1. actually looking for unisex names
| (or avoiding them - a filter?), so you don't need to keep in mind
| or search on both sexes 2. Reduce the amount of total names to
| review
|
| Also something to help reduce yet more variations, an option to
| group similar or very close related names together. Ex. I saw
| Ulisses then Ulysses then Uulisses and so on.
|
| And lastly, a way to sort by popularity, so that I can review the
| less (or most) popular first.
|
| Anyway, great app and congratulations for the baby.
| quartz wrote:
| When we were hunting for baby names I found that fiction
| character naming books (ex: The Writer's Digest Character Naming
| Sourcebook) were really great for inspiration. They tend to focus
| on the perceived qualities of the names more than the social
| qualities and are often more bold in their offerings.
| hamaluik wrote:
| That's a really clever idea, and would probably give us the
| types of names we're looking for (not common but everyone knows
| it and knows how to spell & pronounce it).
| prepend wrote:
| Nice looking app. There's a whole series of apps that just boil
| down to nice UIs on a spreadsheet.
|
| Back in my day we had to use Google spreadsheets.
| hamaluik wrote:
| Thanks! I've found that the vast majority of software I get
| hired to write boils down to just a frontend to a database /
| spreadsheet, and the rest is just window dressing.
| prepend wrote:
| In the 90s there were a bunch of db/programming products like
| clarion, fox pro, and eventually access. It was surprising
| the stuff people made with them.
|
| The cost model for stuff like airtable doesn't lend itself to
| the same products.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Wish this existed years ago! It would be interesting if there
| were phonetic ways to filter names, for example: starts with
| consonant/vowel, has X syllables, ends with X letter(s).
|
| A more advanced version of this could be a system that detects
| phonetic/orthographic similarities between names that you do or
| don't like, and shows you an optimized list of names based on
| your apparent preferences.
| js2 wrote:
| FYI, see the usage note here:
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hone%20in
|
| The app itself seems to be oriented around viewing most popular
| names. It would be nice to have a way to view least popular as
| well.
| bubbleegret wrote:
| What's the best way to explore a large set, one by one? Maybe
| cluster names (maybe there's a meaningful-enough language model
| that works), then when someone likes a name, sample within
| cluster n times, before hopping out to the big set again.
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