Being Mamma Bear

    With only around 5-6 weeks left till Baby Bear’s arrival, we ought to start thinking of baby names. But I am soooo over looking through a website or going through a book of baby names because that’s so normal and regular. I wanted to see if there was another place where I could find interesting, trendy and unique names.

But where do I look? If a website or book dedicated to baby names didn’t have what I needed, was there really another place I could look at? Turns out, there are plenty of them and I’m about to list a few.

So first of all, I have one simple rule. As it is with my characters’ names when I write a story, I will not name my child the same name as someone I personally know, even if they’re just an acquaintance. I just want any history to be associated with that name. And that kind of eliminates hundreds, if not thousands, of names because I don’t want it to be someone my husband knows either.

Once that’s out of the way, we can start looking at names. And I realised that any place that has loads of people, would work just fine. So here’s presenting

6 Unconventional (but totally awesome) 

Resources for Baby Names! 🙂

 

  1. TV Shows & Movies

Well, this can be split into two parts. The first is the names of the characters on any TV show or movie, but I, personally, wouldn’t recommend that. I’m not sure how it is in other countries, but here, in India, names of the lead actors’ and actresses’ characters on popular TV shows and movies become common fairly quickly and many children end up having the same name. If that’s fine with you – many other children born the same year as your baby, who’d also probably be going to school with your kid and end up being friends with and having the same name as your kid – then by all means, go ahead. But I have to tell you that in the last three years that I have seen baby announcements on Facebook, whenever a kid is named after a TV or movie character, s/he is not the only one. And that’s just among people I know. God knows how many other kids born that year would share the same name!

The second part is the credits. I have to admit, this is not an original idea. I came across this while reading an article on TheBump.com on choosing baby names (also the inspiration for this post) and thought it was pretty interesting. At the end of the TV show or movie, you’ll see lots of names of not only the actors but also the people who work behind the scenes. Though I didn’t particularly find a great name searching through the end credits of any movie, there were some interesting ones I’d never heard of before. Also, if you’re looking for a name that’s ethnic, you can pick a movie or TV show accordingly.

As we are looking for Hindu names for our baby, any Indian TV show or Bollywood movie will work. And we don’t even have to watch it. Just the Wikipedia page will have all the information we need. 🙂 🙂

  2. Books

Compared to movies, books are read by fewer people. So if you pick a name from a character in a popular book, unless it’s a mega-bestseller like Harry Potter or Twilight or (God Forbid) 50 Shades of Grey, chances are, you’ll have a unique, yet not so popular name. But then again, characters are not the only names you’ll find. Move past the story to the acknowledgements and you’ll find, in one (or two) page(s) a list of people that the author has thanked and these are all real people! 🙂

For us, I’m going through books by Indian authors and checking out their acknowledgements.

  3. Facebook Friend Lists

Now if you have a rule like mine, don’t go through your own friend list. Pick any friend and go through theirs. The more friends they have, the more options you get. I would recommend Twitter and Instagram too, but since there’s a chance that it’s a business account and it might have a business name instead of a First and Last name (like mine is Mamma Bear), real people accounts might get lost and you’ll have to put twice the amount of effort in looking for names. But hey, if you have time and the patience, then by all means, go for it!

  4. Likes & Comment Sections of Popular Pages

While we’re talking about Facebook, another place to find loads of names would be the Popular Pages. For example, if I want to look for names that are current and trending, I would go to a comedian or actor’s page where most of the audience would be people in their mid-late teens or early twenties. But if I were to look for a traditional name, I would hop on to a page that’s a fan page for a veteran actor or musician.

And I actually tried this yesterday. Sorabh Pant‘s* recent video on Shobhaa De’s tweet showed up on my news feed and it had over 2,000 likes (then. As of this moment, it’s over 9,000) and hundreds of comments, and I was like, whoa! That’s a lot of names. I clicked on the 2,000 likes and scrolled through the names and took a screen shot whenever I found a name that I liked. See what I mean? 🙂

Of course, later, I cropped the image to have just the first name because I didn’t want the profile photo or last name to create a bias or distract me from veiwing the name objectively, but hey, that’s just me and I’m kinda cray-cray 😛

  5. Facebook Groups

Are you a part of a Facebook group? Any group will do. Go through its members. If it’s a mommy group, you’ll find that most of the members are women and if you know you’re having a baby girl, then you’re fine. But for someone like me, who doesn’t know or for someone who doesn’t want to know, you’ll want to find groups that have a generous mix of men and women.

I am a part of a few writers’ groups, hobby groups, etc. and I won’t be looking at the groups that have members from all over the world because I’m looking for Indian names only. So I’ll pick a group accordingly.

  6. Businesses that make Personalised Products

Ever since I’ve started this mommy blog, I’ve come across some great Instagram accounts that have introduced me to what different kind of baby products there are in the market. But the ones that interested me the most were the ones that made personalised baby products because they had a name on every product they made. So every time I scrolled through my instagram feed and one of their posts showed up, I saw a few options for baby names and let me tell you, I already have a favourite name for a girl and I saw it on one such Instagram post.

If you want suggestions, here’s an account you can follow for Indian names.

And for my international friends, you can check this out.

And this…

So you see, there are places other than baby name websites and books where you could find a nice name for your baby.

Do you have any suggestions I can add to this list? If yes, leave a comment below or shoot an email to beingmammabear@gmail.com and I’ll add it here and link back to your blog (and any other social media you want).

And now that I’ve listed so many options, it’s time for me to continue research for a name for my baby. I’m thinking 10-15 minutes every day for the next few weeks on any one of these platforms should help me pick quite a few favourites. And after that, if I have the patience, I’ll also blog about my baby shower 😛

Till then, have a nice day!

Love,
Mamma Bear :-*

*Sorabh Pant is a stand-up comedian and one of the founders of East India Comedy – one of the most popular comedy groups in India at present.