Everyone wants to give their child a striking name that’s cute, unique and proves to the world that you could have been a wildly successful artist if you only had the chance. If you couldn’t take the leap yourself, having a baby is the perfect opportunity to compensate for the decades you’ve spent prioritizing professional and relationship goals – and finally express the full range of your creative prowess! Here’s how to make the most of your unfettered artistic expression while permanently shaping the course of another human being’s life.
Crack Open that Old Poetry Notebook
Selecting a unique baby name is going to require every ounce of repressed self-expression you have! To get inspired, revisit the musings of your late teens, back when your main goal in life was to get your ‘zine published and you didn’t know what a mortgage was. Once you’ve refreshed your memory about how much artistic potential you’ve squandered with your free verse about school being like a prison, the creative baby names will be pouring out of you and your generation will finally meet its Bob Dylan. Ooh, Bob Dylan! That’s a great name for a baby. So far, so good!
Think About Flowers and Space
A surefire way to get those creative naming juices flowing is to think of all the flowers and combine them with planets or astronomical phenomena. Sure, Iris, Rose, and Jasmine are nice- but those names aren’t going to prove that underneath that real estate broker exterior you’re actually someone who could have been a poet or a playwright or successful blogger! Try some lesser-known flowers include Kangaroo Paw, Standard Chrysanthemum, Scotch Broom, and Cow Parsnip with an out-of-this-world middle name and you’ll be brainstorming winning monikers like Bottlebrush 55 Cancri and Mother’s Choice PSR B1620-26, satisfying your artistic impulses until you decide to get a dog in five years!
Find Inspiration From Snack Food Labels
Ever wonder what the name Patty is short for? It’s Potassium Benzoate, the carcinogenic preservative added to soda to keep mold from growing, duh! With rapidly advancing food-science technology, there will never be a shortage of interesting and palatable names to choose from on your favorite snack items. So grab a bag of Hot Cheetos and soon you’ll be rattling off fetching names like Sodium Caseinate (‘Casey’), Carrageenan (‘Carra’), and Monosodium Glutamate (‘Beth’). If you could win a National Book Award for baby naming, you would!
You’re having a baby, and that’s the perfect opportunity to aim for that creative nonfiction Pulitzer you’ve always wanted but didn’t pursue because you felt like a career in the arts was too risky. With these helpful tips and your suppressed abundance of artistic ambition, you’ll come up with a stunningly unique name that will be sure to make your future adult child ask, “What were you thinking?”
