We previously discussed the baby name website Nameberry. One element of that site that we did not cover was their random name generator. I love the name they gave it: Namehunter. It gives the impression that you are a hunter searching for just the right name and when you find it, you are going to snag it for your own.
This particular random name generator has a rather more colorful approach to the task than most. And when I say colorful, I do mean colorful. The first step in the process is to pick if you want boys names, girls names, or both and each of these options has a colorful background to click on.
Upon picking the gender you are looking for names in, the site moves on to picking names that you want to use as inspiration. You have three choices here. You can pick to enter between one and eight names of your own, allow the site to pick a random eight names, or allow the site to pick a random eight names from your favorites if you are registered with the site and logged in.
Pick Your Inspiration
To test this, I put in the first and middle names of myself and my siblings, a rather unconnected collection of names that don’t seem to have much in common. This produced a rather interesting collection of names from classic and/or common names such as Catherine, James, Anne, Thomas, and Victoria to well, that’s different type names that I’m sure were inspired by my own name’s inclusion in the list such as Sabir, Vishnu, Oprah, Zaire, Wyclef, and my favorite Jenifry . . . because why would a family with a Jennifer pick Jenifry?
Interestingly enough my niece’s middle name and the first name of one of my nephews are also included in this list which I found to be a credit of sorts to the functionality of this generator. I also found it interesting that two of my sister’s favorite three names for boys from when we were growing up are on here, the third name being our brother’s name and some of my own favorite names such as Sarah and Timothy are also on here. I think the name I liked the inclusion of the most is Remember, a girls’ name I probably would never use for a child of mine, but that I love the sound of and could see myself using for a character.
That’s So Random
There are a lot of things that can be put into the name if it picks eight names at random. When I asked it to do so it picked some names I had heard of and some I had never heard of or I had never heard of being used as a name. The list is as follows: Izbel, Future, Nachuma, Shahsta, Marylee, Lucrecia, Shayne, and Breaker. This produced a list of names that included, among other things: Santa, Clare, Crash, Sinbad, Maybeth, Flair, Brook, Striker, and Lemon.
It definitely sounds like a random list of names. Since the initial list is a lot less connected than the names in my family, the list created by this process are also a lot less connected. Since I do not have an account with the website I cannot try out the other method, but I would imagine it’s a little like a combination of the two. What method of generating a name do you like best from this generator?
