Yep, You Can Actually Pay Someone $30,000 To Name Your Baby For You
Good news, lazy parents!
Naming a baby is one of the most nerve-racking parts of having a baby. A good or bad name could make or break this kid's future.
Do you give him or her something strong, a name that conveys ability, might or leadership skills? Maybe something softer that represents compassion and a high emotional intelligence? Perhaps you're Gwyneth Paltrow and just f*cking name your kid Apple.
Plus, you have to do all this naming right after a baby enters your lives. You probably haven't slept a full night in a while, and you're emotionally exhausted from worrying that thing doesn't kill itself in any of the million ways babies try to kill themselves.
Thankfully, now you don't have to worry about naming your kids anymore -- if you have a butt-ton of money lying around.
Bloomberg reports baby-naming experts are slowly becoming a staple among new parents looking to not completely eff up naming their children.
One such baby-naming guru is Albert Mehrabian, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, who breaks down potential names and gives them number rankings in four categories: ethical-caring, popular-fun, success and masculine or feminine.
For instance, when asked about the name Polly, Mehrabian told Bloomberg,
Polly is not a heavyweight name. Polly gets a very high score, 98 percent, on 'ethical-caring,' 87 percent for 'popular-fun,' which makes sense, it's a joyful name. But it gets a 12 percent in success.
This gives Polly a final score of B-, so enjoy being an Applebee's hostess for the rest of your life, everyone in the world named Polly, as opposed to Elizabeth, James or Steven, which Mehrabian considers the most technically flawless names on the market.
This guy is actually a little too into baby names if you ask me. This is an excerpt from his book “The Baby Name Report Card: Beneficial and Harmful Baby Names” that talks about the differences between the names Chad and Bud:
The beneficial edge that Chad will enjoy over Bud in these and many other life situations will derive simply from his name. Our survey findings for the two names show, for example, that Chad has extremely positive impressions with respect to popular-fun and successful qualities. In contrast, the name Bud connotes extremely negative impressions with respect to ethical-caring and successful qualities. Both names connote very high masculinity. Thus, Bud connotes an untrustworthy, uncaring, and very masculine person who is a failure; Chad fits the image of an extremely popular, self-assured, masculine, and successful person. The overall attractiveness of the impression generated by Chad (98) contrasts very sharply with that for Bud (2).
He isn't the only one doing this kind of work. A firm in Switzerland called Erfolgswelle recently made the shift from dealing exclusively with brands to naming babies, a service it charges $29,000 for, which gets you around 100 hours of research on a kid's name.
If you're looking for a cheaper way to give your newborn a name, aside from just naming him or her yourself, you should try hitting up My Name for Life, a New York baby-naming company that charges only a few hundred dollars for 30 hours of work on one name report card.
So go for it cheap-o parents! Good luck explaining to your kid, who is now named something dumb like Gunbone or Blerp, that you used the discount naming place, though.
Citations: Would You Pay Someone 30000 To Name Your Baby (Refinery29)
