Picking a Boy's Name is Harder Than It Looks
We're having a boy in July, and for a while we actually thought we'd settled on a name. We both liked it, it felt right, and we were done. Except then other names started creeping in. “What about this one?” “Oh, that's nice too.” And suddenly we had this growing list of names we all liked, but no idea which one we actually preferred.
The thing is, you can't really talk your way through this. We'd sit down and discuss names, and every conversation felt the same. Name A is great, but so is name B, and name C has this nice quality... and we'd circle back to where we started. There was no way to objectively see which names we kept coming back to and which ones were just pleasant distractions.
Why I Built This
I wanted to figure out which names we actually liked best, not which ones we liked in theory. So I built Baby Name League; a simple tool that lets you vote on baby names by comparing them in pairs.
The idea is straightforward: you add all your names, and the tool randomly picks two and asks you to choose which one you prefer. It keeps doing this, tracking the score as it goes. After enough comparisons, a ranking naturally emerges. The names you actually want to name your son float to the top, and the ones you're less sure about fall down the list.
No endless conversations. No trying to rank ten names all at once. Just: which one do you like more? That's it.
Why It Works
When you compare two things directly, you make better decisions than when you try to rank everything at once. Your brain's pretty good at saying “I prefer this one” but terrible at holding a list of ten options in your head and deciding their absolute order.
It's the same reason tournament brackets work, or why you can easily pick your favorite film out of two, but struggle to order your top fifty. Head-to-head comparisons are just easier, and they're more honest. You know you're going with your gut, not overthinking it.
Does It Help?
Yeah, it does. We've used it, and there's something really satisfying about seeing the data. The names at the top of the list feel right in a way the middle names don't. It doesn't make the decision for you, but it tells you what you actually prefer rather than what you think you prefer.
If you're in the same boat, almost set on a name but then found others you like, and you want to see which ones you actually prefer... you can try it out at /baby-name-league. Add your names, vote a few times, and see what emerges. It might surprise you.