Regularly documenting the process on “NameTok” – TikTok’s baby naming world – Prior starts by asking her clients to complete an online consultation form to gather information.
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She then does a combination of name associations, inspirations, recommendations, and research, and ultimately completes the process by having conversations with the client until a name has been selected.
Since 2023, when Prior began working as a professional name consultant, she has helped over 100 couples and individuals from across the world, including Australia. Along with choosing first names, she has helped parents rename their children and generate new surnames for them as well.
Like Fell, Prior believes the demand for her services has a lot to do with an increasingly individualistic society. “As millennial parents have children, they’re aware of not naming their child a name that four to five kids will share in their classrooms, as this was the collective experience of many millennials,” she says.
While my youngest daughter Milla inadvertently became one of these – there were three other Milla or Milas in her class last year – my husband and I chose her name thinking it was unique after reading an alternative spelling of it on an orange juice label. Serendipity also inspired my niece’s name, which was read by her parents on a street sign, and my own – Shona – was a character from a novel my mum was reading when she was pregnant.
Fell says that there is a wide range of methods used to source name inspiration, including historical documents like birth registries, literary sources such as classic literature or mythology, as well as nature and geography. Sometimes, too, more ‘out of the box’ approaches are utilised – including death notices or, like in a now-viral TikTok post, headstones at a cemetery: a trend that has been dubbed “Gravestone Baby.”
For Ballarat couple Megan and Andrew Green, it was the movie Braveheart that inspired their eldest daughter’s name, Murron and the AFL team, Richmond Tigers, was the source of her middle name, Tigerlilly.
Megan and Andrew Green named their daughters with Bravehart, the Richmond Tigers and their family in mind.
“We both have Scottish heritage so wanted something to reflect this,” Megan says. “The Tigerlily came from me wanting Lily as her middle name and her dad not liking it much. However, we both barrack for the Richmond Tigers, so Tigerlily became so much more meaningful,” Megan says.
Their younger daughter, Reagan Belle, 11, was named with her family in mind.
“It is a combination of my husband’s mum’s middle name Rae, who we lost to cancer, and my name, Megan,” she says. While Megan and Andrew value their children’s unique names, perhaps more importantly, so do their kids.
“I love my name because it’s one of a kind, it’s different to everyone else’s and it’s unique,” says Murron, 13. ”I’m glad my parents didn’t go with something simple and plain.”
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