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Comment by VyseofArcadia | Hacker News Reader

I lay awake at night thinking about the baby naming problem.

I want my child to have a name in the sweet spot. Not too common, not too unique, and, crucially, not a name that is popular for only a brief period so that everyone will know about how old they are just by their given name[0].

But people thinking along these lines inevitably gravitate to the same small handful of names, causing the "too popular for a brief period of time" effect against their will. I've already failed once; my cat is named Olivia, the popular girl's name of the decade, apparently.

[0] My own name is one of those. It's annoying.

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I was never going to have kids, but if I did, I had rules for naming.

1. Name them what you're going to call them. If you want a "Kate", don't name them "Katherine". If you want a "Sam", don't name them Samuel.

2. Don't give them the same first name as a close relative.

3. Don't give them a unique spelling of a common name. You're just giving them a life-long annoyance of having to spell their name out any time they're telling someone their name vocally.

My parents broke the first two rules when they named me and it created headaches as I transitioned into adulthood. It even caused problems when I interned at Intel, where he'd been working for 15 years. I got e-mails that were supposed to go to him, and vice-versa.

Yes to 2, BIG yes to 3, a “special” spelling is a curse, why do that to your kid?

I do prefer full versions for the name instead of shortenings or nicknames. I think it lets them feel freer, earlier, to switch to the full version if they like it better than the nickname or shortened version. More options.

>yes to 3, a “special” spelling is a curse, why do that to your kid?

Because American parents these days are a bunch of narcissists.

I’m glad my parents didn’t follow rule 1. They wanted to call me Kathy. It took me until grad school to convince everyone in my life that I was Katherine and absolutely not a Kathy, tyvm. If I’d had to run it by a judge, I’d have been pretty unhappy. As it was, I was grateful they gave me a classic name with lots of nickname options. (Too bad I didn’t know about the paper in time to join in.)

> 2. Don't give them the same first name as a close relative.

My parents wanted to name me after my grandparents but they solved this nicely.

My first name is the middle name of one of my grandparents, and my middle name is the first name of another grandparent.

One of my kids’ middle name is my grandmother’s first name. The other’s first name is my great-grandmother’s first name (which is also my mother’s middle name).

Why not let your child be a product of their times? Whatever name you pick it isn’t like your great grandchildren will think you picked a cool, relevant name for their grandmother.

Because I personally find my name being a product of its time annoying, I think it's reasonable to suspect that someone else would also find that annoying.

Especially given that the hypothetical person in question would get half their DNA from me and be raised by me it seems a pretty reasonable suspicion.

Are you implying we should name the kids via some BabyLLM? /joking

May I recommend https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com ?

Despite the name it has a pretty large category of real world names. :)

I am being completely sincere. There are thousands of lists of baby names. Classic information overload. A randomizer let you look at ten options and if you don't like those you can get another ten.

My suggestion is to hit up the Social Security Administration website: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/. Go back a century (or to some era of choice), walk the list, find one that you like that isn't even in the top X these days and you'll be fairly safe. You'll end up with a reasonable, not-ridiculously-unique name that this generation mostly doesn't have (the site has recent years and names don't usually go from unlisted to popular overnight).

> the popular girl's name of the decade, apparently.

Keep in mind, in the internet era it can actually be nice to have a bad-SEO common name (though that's often dependent upon surname too).

Most of those names no longer in use will be strongly associated with the particular historical period, usually not what you want

this is what we did, and we get so many compliments on the names. works very well

I like having a name like you describe. It's former popularity makes it a familiar name but I've only met a couple of other people with the same first name. Interestingly combined with my similar popularity last name there are on the order of 30 people with matching first and last names in the US.

My mother chose my first name (three characters) specifically to avoid it being turned into a nickname.

This worked so well she later chose a completely unrelated nickname for me.

I’m a bit partial to “Ellie” after one of the characters in my favorite game: Last of Us

I did great people in history, this way my children are cursed with high expectations.

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