Pretty soon, no one will be picking a baby name without doing this first.

by BERN MORLEY

Call me crazy, but I thought parents chose their child’s name because you know, it meant something to them. Whether it’s based on family tradition, trend, sentimental reasons or simply just because they like it, there is one reason I don’t think I have thought to factor in: Because it was available in a domain name.

Yes, there you go again internet, surprising me and proving me wrong with this new discovery made by the Huffington Post.

“Awesome Baby Name is a new online tool that allows parents to choose a name for their child based on website domain availability. Basically, the site asks parents to input their last name and baby’s gender and then it generates a list of name options based on domains that haven’t been purchased. So, you can guarantee that your child will have access to the URL of firstnamelastname.com.”

Check it out:

Look, I’m not so naive as to believe that we don’t live in a technological age where everything will get seemingly easier and mostly, done online. Yet, I am of the age that when we named our children, we had to sit together on the couch and flip through the “The 5,000 most popular baby names”, circling our favourites and eventually culling it down to a shortlist.

Now, well now parents are seemingly on a whole new level. Not only does this website suggest a name, it helpfully links you through to the domain name register – namecheap.com so you can secure the name immediately.

The inspiration for the awesomebabyname.com came about innocently over lunch one day when business partners, Karen X. Cheng and Finbarr Taylor were lamenting about the availability of a website for herself due to her common surname.

“Cheng was complaining that because she has a common name, she’ll likely never get to ownkarencheng.com and “has had to battle with other people in the search rankings on Google,” Taylor told The Huffington Post in an email. “She joked that she would ensure the domain name is available before naming her future child so they can avoid these issues,” he added. “I then joked that there should be a service that does this for you.”

But why? Why would and why should you care if your child has their own domain name? How exactly does this set them up for success or a future better life? Well if Karen Cheng is to be believed, it is so your children will have a “fighting chance of having good SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) in the 21st century”.

Is this just forward thinking gone mad? Shouldn’t we, as parents, be more concerned about whether they’ll be teased mercilessly for an ill thought out Christian name rather than if some random person can Google them in 2040?

Out of interest, I gave awesomebabyname.com a go for myself.

Hmm, not bad. Actually the suggestions are quite cute and for those struggling with inspiration, this really is quite a great tool.

The Huffington Post went on to say that “at the time of their article, according to a “parents served” visitor tracker at the bottom of the homepage, Awesomebabynames.com had already been used by over 176,000 people.”

Not bad for a site that was only launched a week ago. Maybe this is the brave new, baffling world we now live in and I just need to keep up.

Would I ever name my child based around the availability of a domain name? No. I’m thinking no. Would I register it once I had decided though? Sure, why not? Many parents are already registering email address’ in their kids names whether they’ve been born or not, so I can’t see why purchasing a domain name would be any different.

The ridiculous part to me is it being the deciding factor in your choice.

Here are the trending baby names of 2013  according to nameberry.com. We wonder if they checked their domain names?

How about you? Would you ever name your child based on the availability of a domain name? Do you think it would be beneficial in the future?