A Guide to Naming Your Kids in the Internet Era
From WikiName
In this dot com age, it seems like everything is possible, accessible and very few things are sacred including picking a baby name. Way back in the day, parents picked common family names: Mary for a girl or John for a boy. Now, individuality has taken precedent. Of course, uniqueness isn't the only issue -- today's baby should have a domain name. New parents are now considering how the digital age will impact the lives of their children. By choosing a domain name before their baby is born, today's parents are ensuring the digital future of their children. Myspace and Facebook are good examples how today's kids are experimenting in the technical world, and the trend will most likely increase. It is not unusual for parents to begin the baby naming process by a quick stop at [name.com] to see if their favorite name for their unborn child is available for registration.
According to Baby Name Wizard at ivillage.com, the "googability" of a child's name has become just as important as providing the child with a URL of his or her name. It has become fashionable and trendy to have a name that has a page rank high on Google, and if you are willing to pay to increase the page rank of your child's name, you can pay a company like Ziggs Inc. to do just that. For a small monthly fee, this company will run advertisements that tend to rank highly on Google. While executives who want prospective employers to see their name on Google often use this service, and no parents are
In short, here are some things to consider as you set out to give your child a digital edge in the future:
- Give your child a name that sets it apart in some way. This will lead to fewer people having the same name.
- Try a different spelling of a common name to pair tradition with the digital age.
- Also if you want to stick with tradition to some extent, stick with a more common first name and pair it with a distinctive middle name. Plus if you already have a less common last name, chances increase that fewer people will have this full name.
- While an unusual name will make your child's name more "googable," as a parent, you must also consider the safety and privacy factors involved as well. This makes it much more likely that child predators or the like can find a child's name on the internet that much more likely. Keep in mind that there are positives to anonymity for safety concerns.
Author: Nicki Haller
