LOOK: A father that took finding a name for his baby to a whole new level
Imagine... there's now an algorithm to help you choose your baby's name!
Choosing a name for your newborn is no easy task. For many parents it takes a lot of thought and it usually has to come with some meaning, because this name will be your child's mark on the world forever.
So, of course, most parents take time to craft that perfect name for their child. Ideally, many people believe that a name can be so transitional to a child, it can make them live up to achieving their full potential, become legendary, it can empower them, it can mark their entire identities.
When we heard this story of a father (Nick Winter), who also doubles up as a web developer and a blogger, we had to share it with you all and get your opinion about it. This father took naming his newborn to another level when he downloaded the entire "Social Security name database, which has all 93,600 names that have been used at least 5 times in one year since 1880." (MSN)
This is definitely food for thought when it comes to the amount of Johns and Marys we come across daily. Nick decided to develop an algorithm that helped streamline the naming process by using these 12 rules.
The twelve rules include spellability, pronounceability, timelessness, relevance, rarity, secularity, brevity, recitability, nicklessness, nickedness, chineseness, and genderedness.
If you are like us then you will have figured out that some of the titles of the steps are not based on actual words. But we get it and we like his creative approach to narrowing down the name selection for his little one.
Many of the rules are self explanatory, for instance spellability, which refers to names that may incur confusion in terms of spelling, e.g. Katie and Catie and Cathy and Kathy...
Read more: WATCH: Carol Ofori shares her babies' first steps as we see a dad go viral for the same thing
While pronouncability refers to the way your name is pronounced, which can sometimes leave people gobsmacked. When it came to Timelessness, "names that were very old-fashioned or too trendy also lost points in Bantling." (MSN)
Then names that were rare were penalised by Bantling, because they became popular in households due to pop culture, for example Kanye, or Kaleesi...On the other side of this coin was the fact that something too common would also cause an issue as it could mean sharing the same name with someone who doesn't really breathe the greatest of qualities...
The Winters didn't want to the name to be too religious either, so biblical names were out. Another rule was that the names should not have too many letters or syllables, imagine saying "Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta as opposed to Lady Gaga". (MSN)
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Names that had shorter nicknames were ruled out for obvious reasons, why have a name if you are going to shorten it. Since Nick's partner is of Chinese decent, it was important for them to have a name that would be easy to pronounce for native Chinese speakers.
And then the inclusion of genderedness, which left out names that were ambiguous when it came to gender.
"Nick and Chloe picked around 3,650 names, which then they shortlisted the ones they liked from each other’s list. After testing them out, they were left with 15 names, then four and finally two: Hazel for a girl and Max for a boy. Baby Max was born in July, 2005." (MSN)
After all that, we were expecting something out of this world, sounds pretty ordinary don't you think? Well, as Carol Ofori always says, each to their own...What do you think about Nick's algorithm, would you use it?
Image Courtesy of Unsplash Website