Naming My Addiction

Best Baby Name Research Site

• What: Baby Name Wizard
• Why: Research baby names
• Where: Online

If you’re looking for the perfect baby name, look no further than the baby name wizard. I’m totally obsessed with the site, even though we’re done naming our children. I love the Name Voyager graphs, though beware: it has been known to crash my phone and seems to work better on an actual computer. That’s probably a good thing as it keeps my name addiction in check.

I loved reading baby name books as child and exploring the meaning and origins of baby names. But even if you’re not obsessed with names like me, it’s still fun to look up names, including your own. The site offers graphs with the rise and fall of name usage over time, known as the Name Voyager, as well as a Name Finder feature, where you can enter all sorts of parameters from number of syllables to first or last letter – or even certain letter combinations. Maybe like one of our friends, you want all your kids to have the same vowel sound in their name. Baby Name Wizard can help with that. Or you know you prefer popular or rare names. You can enter preferences for minimum and maximum length as well as letters you don’t want any name to start or end with.

Apparently, the same people wrote a book, so if you prefer your baby name research old-school, you can try it out. I’ve only ever used the website, however, so you’re on your own for the book.

Once again, it can be addictive looking up names. One name doesn’t take long to look up, but then you try your husband’s name, his parents, your parents, your cousins, and it turns out you know a lot of people who have names you can explore.