Web Site Suggests Names For Babies

Tue., Oct. 14, 1997

Rob Pegoraro The Washington Post

If you’re willing to trust a strange Web page to come up with plane tickets to Vegas, why not go online to find a name for your baby as well?

The Parent Soup site’s new “Find-O-Matic” option (http://channel.parentsoup.com/babyname/) will suggest names based on your choice of gender, number of syllables, first letter, religion and ethnicity.

You can then click on any of those suggestions for details.

It informed me, for instance, that “Robert” is the 25th most popular boys’ name and is of Teutonic, English, Welch, Swiss, Scottish, Irish, French and Polish origin.

The name finder, based on a program developed last year by Arlington, Va.-based Names and Planes Interactive, does have its limits: I couldn’t find any two-syllable Japanese-Hebrew names, and I don’t think it will it let you name your boy Sue, either.

Elsewhere, the site offers a “Finder Potpourri” listing offbeat monikers and a “Popularity Finder” that may keep your little tyke from being made fun of in her first-grade class.

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