baby

There's a test you can take that tells you if you've picked a "bogan" baby name.

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If John and Mary are too vanilla for your baby name tastes, there are infinite ways to come up with a unique alternative.

(Ooh – Younique! Jot that one down.)

There’s the scrabble name (try putting Tezzina on a triple word score), the deliberately misspelled name (like Xal, pronounced Crystal in case you were wondering), the regular name with a few extra vowels thrown in for good measure (Hi Eirriinn), the mash-up (Kendrew) and the cutesy-nickname as first name (yes – it’s Benji. Not Benjamin, Benji. Like the dog.)

There’s a reason a baby takes nine months to grow. Parents-to-be need a few months to come up with a baby name.

Sebastian sounds all cute and adorable until your dad welcomes ‘little Bazza‘ into the world. A rogue nickname option could send you back to the drawing board.

There are some rules that will always hold true, like don’t name your baby after your car or favourite booze.

Have you ever heard a more bogan name than Tequila-Sunrise? And any name that’s been made famous by a footballer’s baby? Scratch it off your list. Australia doesn’t need another Ayce (which also falls into the deliberately misspelled name AND cutesy-nickname categories. Coincidence? I think not.)

If your head is hurting just thinking about how wrong you can go, you’re not alone. And that’s why we called in the expert.

We invited names guru Sabrina Rogers-Anderson onto our parenting podcast This Glorious Mess to discuss the pitfalls of bogan baby names.

According to the author of The Little Book of Bogan Baby Names, (yep, it’s a real book that you can actually buy!) bogan names can set your child up for failure later in life.

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She says that calling your child Chardonnay practically guarantees they won’t be taken seriously.

Yes, it can be a minefield trying to find a name for your precious offspring that you won’t regret the first time you have to tell someone.

Fortunately, after the podcast went to air we had some correspondence from a listener who has cracked the bogan baby name code. Nicole from Ohio says instead of filtering each name through all the above categories, there is just one simple question you need to ask yourself.

“I’m from the US and while we don’t use the word bogan here we definitely have bogan baby names,” she wrote.

“My friends and I have a test for how trashy baby names are that we call ‘The Doctor Test.'”

Nicole says if you want to know if a name is bogan, you just need to ask: would I go to a doctor with this name?

“Dr Susan Miller, absolutely. Dr Jakxxen Miller, not so much.”

Of course, if you’re happy for your child to go their own way in life and become a bohemian artist or marry a Kardashian then Kwenten probably works too.

Listen to the full episode of This Glorious Mess here:

This content was created with thanks to our brand partner Brickman Awesome.