Well done. You’ve officially made a baby name app that doesn’t suck. Quite the opposite — haha, I just noticed there’s a dark mode too. Ok, between the custom dark mode and the hilarious name, this is the best damn baby name app on the planet.
Thank you!
Oh yeah, congrats on the kiddo. :)
(A feature request: it’d be nice if the explore list could be filtered by decade. The decade filter doesn’t seem to update it right now, only the swiper.)
There's actually a need-gap for 'Suggest unique pronounceable baby names' posted on my problem validation platform[1].
Although I'm not sure how the uniqueness metric could be added to app, You're welcomed to post Nom de Bébé there in the comments to reach out to those who need it.
Edit: Since the main goal of a unique name seems to be email id, social media handle etc. Measuring availability of those from the selected name is actually possible.
[1] https://needgap.com/problems/259-suggest-unique-pronounceabl...
Unique names though… there’s a certain safety in numbers that a common name affords. A unique name is very easy to target in searches.
Also, the number of people who hate their "unique and quirky" name they got from their parents is much, much, much, much higher than the number of people who hate their normal name.
Plenty of upper- and middle-class babies with unique, or at least unusual, names.
Such as?
In my experience, upper and upper-middle class kids get common names, usually a bit on the conservative side, nothing that sticks out too much. Never crazy spelling, never unique names.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jul/05/jacob-rees-...
Interestingly the article shows a way for upper-class people to signal upper-class-ness through names. The other kids all have a normal given name, and can easily fly under the radar. But once you start saying all of their first names, it's a clear signal.
(Because it is in line with how many European royals name their children.)
X Æ A-12 Musk?
Never say never.
There is a big difference between uncommon names but with deep roots like the above mentioned Sixtus and completely unique names X Æ A-12.
The former is very common in the upper classes, the latter not so much.
Here's a good resource if you want to read up on how class works in the US: https://siderea.livejournal.com/1260265.html
Moon Unit, Dweezil, and Diva Thin Muffin Zappa.
Raddix Madden
Lyra Antarctica Sheeran
Kal-El Coppola Cage
Pilot Inspektor Lee
Blue Ivy Carter
Rosalind Arusha Arkadina Altalune Florence Busson
Aleph Portman-Millepied
Bear Blu Jarecki
Kulture Kiari Cephus
Sparrow James Midnight Madden
Exton Downey
Seargeoh Stallone
North, Saint, and Chicago West
Rumer, Scout and Tellulah Belle Willis
In the usual sense used in the US, they’d mostly be above the upper middle class and into the upper class.
In the more theoretically grounded system otherwise used when discussing capitalist societies, they’d still all be, at birth, be at least petit bourgeois, so the idea that such names are clear indication of membership in the “lower classes” is only even possibly true of capitalist classes in the narrowest possible sense (“not of the haut bourgeoisie”, though even that is a stretch), or maybe if you are speaking of vestigial pre-capitalist class systems, and still just as narrowly (“not the titled nobility”).
source: I have a very rare first name.
Then again non-unique names from native regions cannot be pronounced by non-native speakers, My name is far from unique and native English speakers have refereed to it as 'Ab...followed by several other syllables'.
The first name gives anonymity. The middle gives uniqueness that is rarely used except when you want the full formal name and want to be sure you have the right person.
You do have a point regarding security implications of the unique names, Considering people get swatted and have even died for their unique social media handle it might not be worth to pursue a unique name for that.
Could even have the data in a repo to accept pull requests for new names.
* I make enough web-based things for my job, and I enjoy developing in Flutter / Dart (what this was built in).
* I’m never realistically going to be looking through names on a desktop; I use the app when I have a few minutes to kill in line or something where I can pull out my phone, decide on a few names, and then go back to what I was doing. I could build it as an offline web-app that gets saved to my device but then why not just build an app in the first place?
* I like using SQL for retrieving data, and I don’t want to have to jump through hoops to do so.
It's also interesting how this question shifted over time! It used to be that people would ask why you made a Perl CGI or PHP app when you could've just made a desktop app.
ps: congrats on the new baby!
Thanks!
For the father at least...
Congrats!
You could track whether specific locations, or time of day/week, result in liking certain types of names. Version 2.
...it sounds horrific, I'm glad OP went with this model.
`shuf /usr/share/dict/words` was how I picked my HN username.
The list is biased. Not only does it only have U.S. births, but also only those where the individual has a Social Security Number. I wonder how many the latter rules out.
For privacy, it also drops names that are rare, with fewer than 5 births in a given year.
(App is open source, so it’s easy to discover that’s where the names come from. See https://github.com/hamaluik/nomdebebe/blob/main/app/NAMES.md)
I trust the browser sandbox a million times more than I trust the phone app sandbox.
I.e. it's not the web page that is static rather the files to host the web page are static vs say being a php site dynamically generating responses based on user/session/request information.
Indeed. Especially if you want to piss off potensial users/customers.
> There's a difference between asking a question, making a suggestion and shoving ideals down somebody's throat.
Unfortunately, the "ideal" for many is to have an app for their - well - app, or service, whatever it might be. Usually it's just a perfectly functioning responsive web service that is turned to a native app instead of just going for a hybrid app (at least to start with).
In this specific case, there's is _absolutely no reason_ it should be provided as an app, at least not a native one.
Because:
The user already has everything installed on his phone to use the service; a browser.
To me, _as a (potential) user_, having to install this app would have been showing something down my throat. To solve that problem, the developer could have created it as a responsive web application first, and maybe made an hybrid app, and then decided if it is worthwhile creating a native app.
Why the desparate need to create native apps and have to maintain two totally different projects when there's no need to?
Then why make an app out of something that would work just as well with something I have already installed on my phone?
In this case it's very easy: if all the functionality can be run in the browser, which already is an app installed on my computer, don't make it an app. At least not a native one.
I said: don't _create_ apps that shouldn't be apps.
Long before I considered having a child, I built the first baby names app for iPhone with my buddy Dave. [1]
Believe it or not, we had a beef going with another app developer over who truly had the first / best baby names app. App game has been competitive since the get.
That's impressive! Around that time my brother was desperately trying to get me to build his app ideas so we could partner together. I dismissed him as I was busy focussing on school and thought there was no real money in mobile apps. I still regret it today..
It does let you see your partners lists too however, so it’s not completely hidden.
I wish your app had existed then - it would have been easier than the grand email list o’ names we shared with everyone even remotely related to us.
But also, I wonder if that woman had any idea that she would inadvertently name my only child just by bragging about her grand baby. And in a sense, that gets to be your honour now. You built something that will be responsible for naming humans. That’s truly profound.
Great hack…:)
I was actually in the process of writing an app when we were expecting, so I downloaded the US Census CSV of names to import, and when I perused the file I saw a couple names I liked, asked my wife, and we picked one before I ever had to write any code!
We went from trying 5 or 6 apps that we didn't really like, then downloading the CSV of names, then getting overwhelmed by all the names, the making the bone-headed decision to kill a bunch of time building an app instead of just slogging through things.
The script and CSVs ultimately ended up not making a big difference in the decision (it was a significant name from my family) but the process was fun and yielded some interesting results.
Subscription seems like a curious choice of business model for a child naming app.
Congrats on the app.
pink was common for men, being associated as a shade of red to show masculinity
numerous articles and books on the subject (some other tidbits, FDR wore a dress when he was young as it was common for boys at the time until age 6/7)
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/025300117X
https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/08/pink-wasnt...
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-did-girls-s...
So I designed a free (and no ads) web app[0] for me and so others could automat their own pools.
It also has “bebe” in the app name :)
Just as an historical point: There were just two other 'baby pool' type web apps on The Internet at the time (2003~2005). One of those two disappeared a few years ago. This was before conventional wisdom would be that facebook integration was a prerequisite for mass audience success for this kind of app. I was never interested in hitching my wagon to FB or any other third party. I’m happy it’s an independent piece of old school web 1.5 / 2.0 that still kicking a decade and a half later. I hope your app has a long life as well.
Anyway, cheers!
Two things I've noticed so far that seem odd to me: 1. If you have a preference selected on Sex, open it back up and click off without making a selection, the selection is saved as "no preference," however, on other filters, clicking off cancels the changes.
2. When I selected the top 300 names from 2010, Masculine Only, I expected to see the top 300 Masculine names, but instead, it looks like you are returning the first 300 names then filtering from there.
EZ 5-star review for me.
Any chance this will be included in the Fdroid marketplace?
- initials with full name, in various orders (country differences), and
- full name with given name, to see how it reads, sounds, feels.
This was a critical step when naming my kids. You really need to see how yelling the full name sounds. If it is too awkward or has syllables that don't fall together easily, that can make it difficult when you (eventually) need to yell at them for doing something stupid.
Same with the first + middle combination -- those need to flow together well for occasions that require less than full yelling.
Although I guess you'll have a lot of bad data suffering from selection bias, it'll be the most popular name of the parents who used this app and chose to opt-in...
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22332629