Baby names - recommendation engine?

Does such a thing as a recommendation engine for baby names exist? I'm
trawling for baby name websites, and not finding such a thing (although
I now know that the technique I'm looking for is called a
"recommendation engine" ;-).

I'm imagining a website along the lines of many movie and music
recommendation websites - "If you enjoyed movie_a, movie_b and
movie_c, you may also enjoy movie_d or movie_e".

Even Amazon's "people who bought that book also bought this" facility
uses the same basic concept.

The site I need right now is more along the lines of "if you're
considering names such as Tom and Dick, you may also like the name
Harry".

Our firstborn is due early January. Very early days yet, so lots of
time to choose names and plan for life to never be the same again. We
have a few possible boys' and girls' names listed, but we know there
are plenty more that we would seriously consider...if only we could
think of them.

I know some parents have great taste in names, and some have awful
taste...and, of course, taste is a personal thing. It would be good to
tap in to the name ideas of people with similar tastes to our own, and
consider some of the other names they have considered.

If there isn't such a thing already, somebody should set one up. As I
picture it...A new visitor would be given a list of (random) names to
rank ("yes", "maybe" or "no"?). Within a few tries, the server should
be able to start making sensible preditions as to what names are likely
to get good rankings, based on the user's previous responses and the
responses of others who have made similar choices.

It might be a useful tool to sugest a the perfect name, that the
parents-to-be wouldn't have ever thought of.

Please let me know if there is anything similar to this in existence.
And if there isn't...some code-geek out there has about 8 months to
make it happen in time! :P

fs
dad in 8 months and counting...

fs writes:

Does such a thing as a recommendation engine for baby names exist? I'm
trawling for baby name websites, and not finding such a thing (although
I now know that the technique I'm looking for is called a
"recommendation engine" ;-).

I'm imagining a website along the lines of many movie and music
recommendation websites - "If you enjoyed movie_a, movie_b and
movie_c, you may also enjoy movie_d or movie_e".

Even Amazon's "people who bought that book also bought this" facility
uses the same basic concept.

The site I need right now is more along the lines of "if you're
considering names such as Tom and Dick, you may also like the name
Harry".

I think the trouble is that the things you mention, movie, music and book
recommendation engines, hang off the fact that there's already a widely
used mechanism for people to record their preferences. For names, you'd
have to start from scratch building that. You could of course build such a
thing and just rely on people's natural liking for expressing their
opinions to ensure that lots of people will go and record what names they
like, but the data isn't already out there, I think, so the first people
would have to record their preferences without getting anything back for
their trouble. I can't devote the time to building such a thing myself, but
as you say, technically it wouldn't be that hard. If someone else does, I
don't mind doing my bit for the community by ranking some names!

Our firstborn is due early January. Very early days yet, so lots of time
to choose names and plan for life to never be the same again. We have a
few possible boys' and girls' names listed, but we know there are plenty
more that we would seriously consider...if only we could think of them.

How about just posting the names you do like here, with a request for
people who like your names to suggest others? (There's no guarantee that
the people who hate your names will keep quiet, this being Usenet, but you
can ask!)

FWIW DH and I used what is probably the most nerdly method I've heard of.
We went to www.behindthename.com, each printed out a full listing of all
the names there (17,000 or so? site's not responding right now so can't
check) in very small type, and each went through making shortlists
independently. Then we looked at both our shortlists. There was a small
intersection, but actually it turned out that we convinced one another - in
the end, the girl name we chose had been on my shortlist but not DH's, and
the boy name we chose (not Colin, that's a screenname, as is Sidheag) had
been on DH's shortlist but not mine. At least we were pretty sure we
weren't missing something we'd both have liked better!

Sidheag
DS Colin Oct 27 2003

Not exactly what you're looking for, but take a look at these:
http://www.babynamecenter.com/ has different categories...popular,
shakespearean, unusual, etc
http://www.babycenter.com/babyname you can enter origin of name, #
syllables, first and last letter

This may not help with choosing, but I thought it was cool
http://babynamewizard.com/namevoyager/lnv0105.html
as you type in a name you are interested in, the field narrows. IE it
displays popularity of similar names by same first letter, then second
letter, etc until you have only the name you typed in left and you can see
how it's popularity has changed over time. If you know the first sound you
want, it might help with a choice.

Amy

wrote in message
oups.com...
Does such a thing as a recommendation engine for baby names exist? I'm
trawling for baby name websites, and not finding such a thing (although
I now know that the technique I'm looking for is called a
"recommendation engine" ;-).

This is what I used:
http://tools.oxygen.com/babynamer/

--
Jacqueline
#1 Due late Jul/early Aug

V. wrote:
This may not help with choosing, but I thought it was cool
http://babynamewizard.com/namevoyager/lnv0105.html
as you type in a name you are interested in, the field narrows. IE it
displays popularity of similar names by same first letter, then second
letter, etc until you have only the name you typed in left and you can see
how it's popularity has changed over time. If you know the first sound you
want, it might help with a choice.

The author of that software, or someone connected to it,
now has a book out called _The Baby Name Wizard_. When you
look up a name in it, it tells you "brothers" and "sisters"
for the name, and I find that I generally feel the same way
about a name and its brothers and sisters, so that might work.

Emily

Here is the suggestion for good baby names as follows
- George
- Heather
- Andrew
- Nathaniel.

First of all you tell me. You your needed baby’s girls name or baby boys so than I can do you help?

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Yes, exactly what you described exists - a baby names recommendation engine. You can find it at:

http://www.babynamester.com/oracle/start

There may be others out there too, but this is the one I'm aware of.

This is an old thread, but I'll post an update in sake of people that are still searching for a baby name recommendation engine.

At this site:

http://en.thenamestork.com

You can provide the names of the baby's siblings or other names you like. Then you receive a list of suggested names, personally customized.