Dad-to-be chooses perfect baby name by following 12 strict rules

22 October 2021, 11:17 | Updated: 22 October 2021, 11:38

Joe Swash praises Stacey Solomon after she manages to get Rose and Rex asleep at the same time

By Heart

@thisisheart

A dad found his perfect baby name by using a very specific set of rules.

A dad-to-be has revealed his unusual method for choosing the perfect baby name.

Instead of looking through a book like most parents, blogger Nick Winter used a mathematical algorithm.

Firstly, he downloaded the entire Social Security name database to his laptop, which includes 93,600 names that have been used more than five times since 1880.

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He then entered them into a web app which has a set of different questions to follow.

Some of the criteria for the app are:

• 'Spellability' - penalises names which sound similar to other common names, since people will not know how to spell them.
• Pronounceability - penalises names which we think could be pronounced two different ways, or which have Rs in them.
• Timelessness - penalises anything that's extra old-fashioned, is extra trendy now, or was a fad name in the past.
• Relevancy - penalises very rare names.
• Rarity - penalises names that are very common.
• Shortness - penalises names with many letters or many syllables.
• 'Recitability' - penalises names that aren't easy to spell aloud.
• 'Nicklessness' - penalises names that have shorter nickname versions.
• 'Nickedness' - penalises names that are nicknames of longer names.
• 'Genderedness' - penalises names that are ambiguously gendered.

Despite the controversial technique, Nick explained: “For me, this was the obvious way to do it. I quickly went through about 3600 of the 93,600 names, liking 76 and hating the rest.

“Chloe (the mum-to-be) did about 3700 names (different ones, for her different preferences) and liked 81 of them.

“We then reviewed each other's, often using the phone test, where you pretend to answer the phone with your name ("Kent Winter–err, no.").

"This left an overlap of about 15 names (mostly girls' names).”

Stacey Solomon shares adorable view of Rose as the baby sleeps

The couple made their final decision by putting their favourite options on a sticky note on the fridge, before removing the ones they didn't want.

They settled on Hazel and Max, with Chloe giving birth to a little boy a short while after and calling him Max.

This comes after the least popular baby names of 2020 were revealed this week.

The Office of National Statistics has published its annual list of the most used monikers in the UK for 2020.

And it turns out there were no registered births of boys called Nigel, making it officially ‘unranked.’

When it comes to girls, Carol has also become ‘unranked’, while just three girls were named Cheryl and six called Lorraine.