Towards the end of my 12-week scan, the sonographer leaned in and told us he was “70% certain” we were expecting a girl. It was early days but they had ways of knowing, he said. How nice that we already had a girl’s name ready – my grandmother’s, Narayani, or Nara. But at the 20-week scan another sonographer informed us we were actually having another boy. Our hearts sank when we realised we had to go through our previously rejected boys’ names again.
First time round, my boyfriend and I were fighting about our five-week-old son’s name inside the actual register office. “If you can’t think of a better name than Ivan, that’s what we are going with,” he hissed. I couldn’t, and so we did. We thought we’d call him Van, like the singer, but he became Kraken, after the sea monster (he was a bad sleeper), until a therapist suggested he’d “end up on the couch”. Now he’s Ivan.
Baby naming is fraught, the responsibility huge. Take my boyfriend: he has always been Oscar but his actual first name is – because of various oft-told tales involving his grandparents and the war – Oliver. It plagues him to this day, not least bureaucratically.
My name also carries some heft. I’m pretty sure I’m the only Morwenna Ferrier out there, so how do you follow that? It is a fine balance: give the child a name that is too normal and they’ll be forgotten. Too unusual and they’re cursed for life.
Growing up, I disliked my name’s weirdness. I lied in Starbucks. I was Jenny while booking taxis. It was only when I entered a career in which nominal differentiation was useful that I began to welcome it. Morwenna is Cornish, and while there were three at my Somerset school, in London it was unplaceable. But when we moved house recently, I learned from the local WhatsApp group that I was one of three pregnant Morwennas in the area. Overnight, I had become common.
My problem is that I believe there is a perfect-yet-weird name out there. Colleen Slagen, a baby name consultant from Massachusetts, laughs when I tell her this. She calls them “prestige names” – those one-off ones you hear in the playground and wish you’d thought of yourself.
“Growing up, there were often three children with the same name in a classroom. In modern parenting, that’s unthinkable,” says Slagen. Since the late 19th century, parents have increasingly given their children less common names, suggesting increasing interest in individualism. Today, a unique name is one of the biggest clues to what a parent wants their child to be – but also a sign that collectivism is out and individuality is in.
Slagen blames the internet, which has created more options while also paralysing us. Google most names and you’ll find some nefarious name-twin. Google how to name your baby, and you’ll probably find a quiz. (I recently took the “what’s your cottagecore baby name quiz” on Nameberry, which took my preferred outdoor activity and walking shoes, and suggested Robin Birch Maple.)
This, presumably, is why people are turning to professional baby namers, a nascent profession in the UK but booming in the US. Slagen, a former nurse practitioner, began doing it as a hobby, but in 2021 it became her job. She has 15 clients a month and charges a few hundred dollars for several hours’ work. Like most baby name consultants, she begins with a questionnaire of likes and hates – actual names but also letters, syllables, ancestry and alliteration – then offers her own thoughts. Her sources are Nameberry, Reddit and her own vast repository.
The stakes are high: parents will request names from the first half of the alphabet, or names with three syllables. She recently sent suggestions to a mother in active labour. My caveats are less compelling, but include no Marks or Adams (exes), no royal names, nothing Russian (Ivan is plenty) and ideally two syllables. These are arbitrary demands in hindsight, but at least it got me going.
Baby naming has, Slagen says, been hit by the same marketisation bug as weddings and baby showers. It’s driven by a chance to create something one-off, but also by celebrities wanting to convey that they are rich and beautiful by calling their daughter Grass. “This has raised the bar for everyone else,” she says. “See Cardi B, who went for Kulture, actor Jason Lee, who called his son Pilot Inspektor, and Apple Martin, which is one for the history books. Rihanna’s newborn is called Riot, which is weird, but less so than her first: RZA.”
Slagen suggests we scribble down qualities we’re looking for. “I probably have a slightly snobby desire to find a name that isn’t really popular,” says Oscar. “But I retain a playground insecurity that tells me if you give a kid a really wild name, they might suffer.”
I agree, but also think a name that references my heritage (be it Scottish, West Country or Assamese) would whittle it down. I like the traditionally socialist Keir, but now it sadly makes me think of Starmer rather than Hardie. Oscar is after a name with Celtic or Norse associations. Parents doing ancestry checks has become a factor, says Slagen, which is why Oscar had Danish names on his list, after his father did a test – he has jotted down Anders and Seumus.
“I should acknowledge that a certain amount of patriarchal traditionalism seems to emerge in me in these circumstances,” he adds. For this reason, some family names – Jack, William – are on his list. To that I added Billy, Silas (after George Eliot’s Marner) and Bruno (no idea). Though unmarried, we agreed to continue Oscar’s father’s surname (my parents’ divorce means I have less attachment to mine).
Finally, we turn to the classic no nos: names that actively invite bullying, and despots. In New Zealand, for example, Sex Fruit and Fat Boy are blacklisted. Unsurprisingly, Hitler is banned in Germany, but so too are names that don’t explicitly state gender. In France, a couple were banned from naming their child Nutella because it was “against the child’s interest” (they named her Ella).
We’re pretty lax in the UK, but Martian and Monkey are both out. The registering officer can draw a line if something is deemed unpronounceable.
According to the Office for National Statistics, Noah and Olivia were the top UK baby names in 2021. Noah makes me think of boats, and I hate boats, so that was off. The ONS also says older mothers prefer traditional names, younger mothers something wackier from YouTube, and gender-neutral names are favoured by middle-class parents.
I’d like to think I have full agency here. But I’m sure external forces are at play. Vintage names are big among the middle classes. Also popular are pre-formed nicknames – Freddie and Archie. People with easier-to-pronounce names also tend to be judged more positively. And unusually spelled names are linked to lower socio-economic groups, which can lead, depressingly, to further bias, usually at school.
Your name isn’t simply your identity. It can affect your job prospects as well – in an effect known as the Portia hypothesis (because of cross-dressing Portia in The Merchant of Venice), women with “sexually ambiguous names” such as Cameron or Leslie tend to be more successful at work. If nothing else, it suggests that gender bias is alive and well.
At this point, my unborn son was the size of a cantaloupe and we’d broadened our remit to include neolithic monuments (Arran) and supermarket brands (George is still in my top 10). Virgil (footballer and poet) was struck off. Eventually we picked three apiece, scrawled the six on Skagen’s form, sent it off, moved house and tried to forget about it.
A few weeks later, Slagen came back with her thoughts. She said my answers were short and suggested I wasn’t taking it as seriously as some. The truth is, I was afraid to commit. Not to mention uncomfortable about outsourcing something this personal to someone I had only met on a videocall. Yet it was strangely helpful. There was no judgment. She also suggested we avoid an “-an” ending because it’s close to Ivan, which got rid of Orran and Arran.
Rereading her list in bed one night at around 35 weeks, I was struck by how it turned our unborn into something real, and less abstract. I’m also amazed to say that we added two of her names to our shortlist.
Our son was born and the exact same thing happened a few weeks latter: we found ourselves at the town hall with three names. By the time we’d taken a ticket in the waiting room, it was two.
We chose Billy. It’s a nod to Oscar’s father, Willy (William), without being a facsimile. It’s prosaic, uncomplicated and sweet, and skips along nicely with Ivan. It was also my turn to have the casting vote, and Oscar couldn’t make a convincing case for anything else. However Billy, not William, is also a pre-formed nickname which, it turns out, is something people have thoughts about.
Choosing a name before the baby was born was never going to work for me. However long the list, the baby would always be born first and named at the eleventh hour. That way, we could sit with it; see if Billy fits Billy. And he does.
Tips from the baby-naming consultants
“Don’t be afraid to have very specific criteria,” says Slagen, by which she means specific syllables, spellings, vetoes but also pronunciation and even nickname-ability. “However minor it seems, having distinct ‘rules’ will help narrow it down.”
Think as much about what you don’t want as what you do, says name consultant Hannah Emery. “Do you want something popular? Something associated with a particular ethnic background? Any family names to use or avoid?”
Don’t choose illogical spellings just to be “different”, says New York-based naming consultant Sherri Suzanne. “I also avoid names that don’t seem compatible with your surname or have a pop culture association that’s hard to live down. It is important for children to introduce themselves with confidence.”
Do involve your partner on the minutiae – however boring it might seem
Often both partners have preferences or requirements they aren’t really conscious of, says name consultant Hannah Emery. “I consider things like popularity, classic v modern qualities and ethnic background, but also more nuts-and-bolts stuff like the letter combinations a couple seems to like.”
