Kids' names

Isn't it amusing what people call their children and why! It took me and my wife quite some time to decide the names of our children. There were criteria that had to be satisfied before we were able to commit. It wasn’t as simple as liking a name. In addition we found that they had to be unique, well, unique within our social group and families, so that we felt we were being original. Also, they had to have some kind of ancestral relevance, as opposed to being arbitrary. Then there was the correct and appropriate spelling of each name and how the name might become abbreviated or twisted into a nickname. Additionally, were the names fashionable? Finally, there was the ‘shouting the name across the supermarket or play park without being embarrassed’ factor.

Baby name selection daddy style - the iPhone name shaker

Well here's another ever so practical iPhone application perfectly suitable for busy dads. The various "baby name shaker" apps have set out to take the process of choosing your baby's name into the 21st century. Find the perfect name for your baby using your iPhone ... what a great idea!

Gone are the days when you had to troll through dozens of over-prized baby name books or sign up to all sorts of dodgy email newsletters on baby naming sites just to get access to a collection of potential names for your baby. Also gone are the days when you had to resort to throwing books in the air to see which page they land on to introduce a random element to your selection.

The name shaker apps on the iPhone use the phone's accelerometers to assist with the name selection. So you can simple shake the phone and get a random name. If you prefer the rational method of trolling through the long list of names you can do that as well of course. Other features of most apps include:

* advanced search
* short listing / filtering (boy / girl)
* favourites
* meaning of names
* multi-language support

All up just the perfect and simple solution to a non-trivial task and at a price way below baby name books (prices range from $4.19 to $6.49).

Baby names

Funny little ad about baby names with a great song (if you don't remember it's the "Israelites" originally written by Desmond Dekker and Leslie Kong).

-Stef

Biblical to bizarre baby naming

Found this on an Internet News site, interesting to note, I thought I was being original by picking Ava for my new baby girl, as it turns out Ava is in the top 4 girls names in the US for 2007.

- Eric

Planning on naming your baby Jacob or Emily? Be forewarned, those two names topped the US most popular list again last year -- Emily for the 11th year running.

The 2007 top baby names list released by the US Social Security Administration for Mother's Day on Sunday showed Americans consistent in their love for classical names: Michael, Ethan, Joshua and Daniel topped out the top five on the boys side, while Isabella, Emma, Ava and Madison were favorites for girls.

But the list showed that plenty were striving to be unique, creating wholly new names like Nevaeh -- "heaven" spelled backwards -- or sometimes just taking extreme orthographical liberty with better-known monikers.