Baby Name Generator

How the Baby Name Generator works

Baby name generator: why meaning and origin come first

Most parents narrow the field before they browse it. The usual filters are a cultural or family origin, a sound the name should start with, and — increasingly — a meaning that says something about what they hope for the child. This page puts those three filters on the front, and shows the meaning beside every name it suggests, so that a list of ten is ten names you can actually weigh rather than ten names you then have to look up.

The origins are broad naming traditions rather than modern countries. Hebrew and Greek names travel through every Christian and Jewish culture, Latin names underlie most of Western Europe, and Arabic names are used across the Muslim world far beyond the Arab countries. Setting the origin filters to names that come from that tradition; a name like Sofia belongs to Greek even though it is now popular everywhere.

Meaning themes

Meanings are grouped into themes — Nature, Strength, Light, Love, Faith, Wisdom, Joy, Peace, Nobility and Beauty — because a parent looking for "something to do with light" wants Lucy, Elena, Nour, Hikari and Phoebe together, not spread across a dictionary. The theme is a judgement call for each name; Sofia is Wisdom, Freja is Love, Bjørn is Nature. The literal meaning is always printed, so you can disagree with the grouping and still find what you need.

First letter

Families often want a name that starts with a given letter — to honour a grandparent, to fit an initial that is already on the nursery wall, or simply to avoid a clash with a sibling. Type a letter and the suggestions are restricted to it. Combined with origin and theme this can narrow the list a long way; if nothing comes back, loosen one of the other filters.

Twin pairs

Twin names work when they are related without being matching. The generator pairs names from the same origin that share one of three things: a first letter (Mia and Max), an ending (Ella and Bella), or a syllable count (Oscar and Hazel). It never pairs a name with itself, never pairs across traditions, and prints both meanings so that the pair reads well as a pair.

Matching existing siblings

Type the names of the children you already have, separated by commas, and choose To match existing siblings. The generator looks each name up in its own lists to work out the family's naming tradition, measures the names' length in syllables, and then suggests names of a similar length, preferring the same tradition when you have left Origin on Any. It also leaves out any name that is already taken. A family with an Oisín and a Niamh will be shown Irish names of one or two syllables; a family with an Alexander and a Theodora will be shown longer Greek and Latin names. If the existing names are not in the lists at all, the generator falls back to matching on length alone.

What the lists are

Each origin carries twenty boy and twenty girl names chosen for being well-established, easy to spell and pleasant to say, with a meaning that is reasonably well attested. They are a starting point, not a census: the rarer names in each tradition and the newer coinages are not here, and the meanings given are the conventional ones rather than a full etymology.

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