Show HN: My wife is pregnant; naturally I made a baby-name app to prepare • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: My wife is pregnant; naturally I made a baby-name app to prepare

#241

Post by asymptotic » Fri, Nov 05, 2021, 7:09 PM UTC

Congratulations! I did the exact same thing; made an app to help name my first child.

I've slowly developed a method which incorporates 1) culture, 2) popularity in different countries, and 3) pronunciation of names and attempts to recommend you names based on names you like. It kind of works, it's taken a lot of tuning to make it output something sensible. It's specifically designed to attempt to combine cultures together, which is a top request from customers I identified.

I've been working on releasing the app for a while. If you're interested in helping me test it before its release this month please feel free to sign up here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/namenerds/comments/qge6t9/im_lookin...

I will also look at this thread's comments closely before launching.

Re: Show HN: My wife is pregnant; naturally I made a baby-name app to prepare

#242

Post by jeffwass » Fri, Nov 05, 2021, 7:09 PM UTC

regus wrote: post #135

We recently had our first child and finding a name for him was extremely difficult. We tried using books and apps but they weren't that helpful. Part of the problem was that we wanted a name that would work in both english and spanish, and wasn't too popular or trendy. I found that I hated most boy names, especially the ones that are trendy today (Aiden, Jaiden, Zaiden). Feel free to name your kids whatever you want,…

Your list reminds me of this SNL skit of nearly 30 years ago :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goPerp_BWvs

Re: Show HN: My wife is pregnant; naturally I made a baby-name app to prepare

#243

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Nov 05, 2021, 7:10 PM UTC

hamaluik wrote: post #2

This will be our second kid, and at least for us figuring out a name that we both love is hard. There are literally tons of baby-name apps out there, most of them more fully-featured and polished than Nom de Bébé and you should probably use one of those. However a lot of them include a disturbing amount of tracking or for any number of reasons just didn't work for my wife and I (bugs, subscriptions, lack of names, et…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: My wife is pregnant; naturally I made a baby-name app to prepare

#244

Post by sergers » Fri, Nov 05, 2021, 7:13 PM UTC

pmarreck wrote: post #236

andrewshadura wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great app, however I'm not sure "pink for girls, blue for boys" should be the only colour combination. After all, just less than a hundred years ago the colours were reversed.

evidence for that last claim? because it is interesting

pink and blue were gender neutral.

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...

Re: Show HN: My wife is pregnant; naturally I made a baby-name app to prepare

#245

Post by laingc » Fri, Nov 05, 2021, 7:21 PM UTC

Very nice! The baby name app we used worked on a Tinder-like swipe-right basis. At the end, you ended up with your “matches”.

But the best part about the app was the name - Kinder. (German for “children” and rhymes with Tinder)

Re: Show HN: My wife is pregnant; naturally I made a baby-name app to prepare

#246

Post by olliemath » Fri, Nov 05, 2021, 7:22 PM UTC

Very nice! We spent quite some time on this and aren't even having a kid.

How did you implement the tournament? It feels very long when you have many names - almost like it's doing all N^2 pairs, or is there something smarter?

EDIT: spelling

Re: Show HN: My wife is pregnant; naturally I made a baby-name app to prepare

#247

Post by sildur » Fri, Nov 05, 2021, 7:27 PM UTC

hamaluik wrote: post #2

This will be our second kid, and at least for us figuring out a name that we both love is hard. There are literally tons of baby-name apps out there, most of them more fully-featured and polished than Nom de Bébé and you should probably use one of those. However a lot of them include a disturbing amount of tracking or for any number of reasons just didn't work for my wife and I (bugs, subscriptions, lack of names, et…

There was an app where each one of you had to left-swipe/right-swipe through a list of randomly selected names, and the app would tell you when both of you liked the same name.

Re: Show HN: My wife is pregnant; naturally I made a baby-name app to prepare

#248

Post by NaturalPhallacy » Fri, Nov 05, 2021, 7:29 PM UTC

jl6 wrote: post #229

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congratulations on both the baby and the launch of the app! 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…

Problem validation is a brilliant idea. 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.

And nobody ever understands you when you introduce yourself, or when they're trying to pronounce it from reading it.

source: I have a very rare first name.

Re: Show HN: My wife is pregnant; naturally I made a baby-name app to prepare

#249

Post by Someone » Fri, Nov 05, 2021, 7:36 PM UTC

zorked wrote: post #43

koolba wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why an app rather than a static site deployed to something free like GitHub pages? Could even have the data in a repo to accept pull requests for new names.

"Why isn't this a text file so that everybody can simply use their Unix shells to shuf -n 1 /usr/share/dict/baby-names".

Because everybody knows how trivial it is to curl/wget the list from https://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/limits.html, unzip it, etc.

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)

Re: Show HN: My wife is pregnant; naturally I made a baby-name app to prepare

#250

Post by seanc » Fri, Nov 05, 2021, 7:37 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #204

seanc wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe it or not a good source of those is the Bible. Every language knows what do with them, either pronounce natively or a direct analogue; Ivan/John and so on.

This depends on your concept of how names work. Some people (often dependent on native language of those people) think names should be translated, but to me they're more like a token than other words. If your name is Xinyi, your name in English is Xinyi, some people would disagree and say your name in English is Joy; whilst xinyi means joy (IIRC) that's not how names [should] work [IMO]. This might relate in part to…

Yes, for sure, in the end you should call people what they want to be called. I know lots of Chinese people who chose an English name rather than put up with hearing their Chinese name horribly mangled all the time, and I know other Chinese people who prefer to go by their Chinese name and coach people how to say it properly. Or as close as we can get.

In my case sometimes people have trouble with 'Sean' (Irish for John), so I just tell them to say whatever style of John they're most comfortable with. Since it's a biblical name they'll have heard John before in their own language and have access to something familiar.

But mileage does vary indeed.