You Should Let Your Computer Name Your Child…
I recently found out that I will be venturing into a previously unknown territory called fatherhood in the near future. With this exciting news comes a whole slew of new items to add to my ever growing to-do list. Not least important, choosing an… appropriate and socially acceptable… name for the little guy/girl… I don’t think Odin would fly with the misses… Seeing as I am about halfway through the software engineering course at Flatiron, and it just so happens to be time for another project, I figured I would take this opportunity to shorten that to-do list by one.
Enter the “Let’s Name the Baby” app. Heather, my (much) better half, came up with the idea while we were looking though baby name books with literally hundreds of thousands of options to choose from. We were making LONG lists of baby names that we each liked. Comparing lists, adding/removing names, comparing again… Basically, the app saves and compares your list for you, then lets you know which names your lists have in common.
On the landing page letsnamethebaby.com (shameless plug) you are presented with a pretty simple choice… sign up, or sign in. Whew, you did it! Keep knocking these decisions out of the park and you are well on your way to becoming a successful parent! From here you will likely be signing up by logging into your Google account, or by creating a team name and password. If by some crazy coincidence you have already found my app, you can probably stop reading here…
Next, you will enter your team info… with options abound, things are getting a bit more difficult, hang in there. If you are unsure what flavor of baby you will be having, you can select “baby” rather than “boy” or “girl”. This will give you a list of all the names, both male and female…. If you are expecting fraternal twins, one of each variety, this is also the right choice for you.
And now the meat of the app… The list… Here you can browse the list of nearly 9,000 names, search for a name to find it’s meaning and origin or, if you already have some names in mind, you can add names directly to your list… DON’T FORGET TO SAVE YOUR LIST!
Now, once your list is full of names that you love… and you have checked with your partner to make sure they have a full list as well, you can click the button that says “Show Matching Names”. Assuming you and your partner have similar taste, you should see a list of names that both you and your partner love. Congratulations, you did it! Well, your phone/computer did most of the work, but hey, isn’t that the case with most things now days? Either way, you now have something to yell at your offspring to get it’s attention, and that’s what is really important.
