Shake that iPhone, name that baby!

By Stuart Corner
Friday, 10 October 2008 00:53

Market

For the soon-to-be-parents who have everything (well an iPhone, at least) comes a solution to the enduring dilemma - what to name the imminent bundle of joy. It's an iPhone application that produces lists of suggested names.

You simply choose a gender and a starting letter, then give the iPhone a shake at which point your iPhone will make a sound like a baby's rattle and throw up a scrollable list of baby names, complete with origins and descriptions. If you don't like any of those, give it another shake and it will throw up more choices.

You can also search for names by origin, save the most likely candidates to a favourites list and email these to friends and family.

The app, Name That Baby!, is the brain-child ('scuse the pun) of Shona Killoughery-McKenney, "a stay-at-home mom of two kids under five years old from London, who currently resides in California." She says she was "looking through the Apple store and noticed how few iPhone applications there were for parents." And she is not stopping at baby names. Her web site promises another iPhone app I'm a Parent, "coming soon".

Name That Baby!  costs $US3.99 from the Apple Store; a snip compared to the price of most books of baby names. However while it promises "thousands of names" it does not say how many you get, and unlike a book, you can't pick it off the shelf and flick through the pages to get a feel for the contents.