Lara Bingle and Sam Worthington’s son Rocket Zot recently got his name hammered in the press. Celebrity mum Chrissie Swan wouldn’t have approved of that, because she believes that nobody deserves to have their baby name rubbished. She had her children’s’ names, Kit and Peggy, criticised, so she knows how horrible it feels. However, even Chrissie draws the line somewhere, and for her it is demonic names. I’ve noticed nobody seems able to say, “All baby names are great”; everyone has a clause in fine print that says, “Except for these obviously terrible names that nobody in their right mind would consider”.

However, while Alissa Warren from Mamamia agrees that bagging out someone’s baby name after the baby is born is not on, she thinks it’s fine to do it before the baby is born (as a warning, I guess). Chrissie would not be on board with that, because her son’s name was called “a nothing name” before his birth, which has damaged her relationship with the friend who shared this pre-natal opinion. Lots of comments on the article, with nearly all of them saying that you can’t be rude about someone’s baby name before the baby is born either, or even if the name hasn’t been decided yet.

They weren’t quite criticised, but certain rare names chosen by Australian parents at Baby Center this year were mentioned on Scoopla. Boys names included Anthem, Basil, Denim, Falcon, Finnick, Guru, Judge, Patch, Ranger, Tiger, Viggo, Zealand, and Zeppelin, while unusual names for girls were Agape, Chia, Elowen, Holiday, Hyacinth, Lark, Neo, Nivea, Posey, Sparrow, Tempest, and Violina. Members voted Moody for boys and Yolo for girls (an acronym for You Only Live Once) as the most unusual names they had heard of.

Of course, people are always fiddling the numbers to “prove” how rare or how common a name is, sometimes with unconvincing results. The Daily Telegraph looked through the data, and found that names like Arya are more often used than “common” Australian names like Kylie and Sharon. Sharon is a common name for women in their fifties – not at all common for newborn babies. Surely no one is surprised to hear there are more new babies named Arya than Sharon?

Same with this article on baby boomer names which are supposedly “dying out”. There’s not many Bruces around, but the numbers have remained pretty stable for the past 15 years, which doesn’t spell death to me. Neil is holding its own, and Ian is a classic which is still in the 200s – not even close to needing palliative care. Sandra hasn’t disappeared from the charts just yet, and classic Helen has been stable for a decade and may even be on the rise. The article is quite right though that even the “dead” names could very well come back one day – one day people will be naming their babies after Great-Grandmother Judith, the same way Elsie and Ruby have been rediscovered.

If you yearn for your own unique baby name, and are dismayed to find that Finnick and Elowen aren’t as one-off as you’d hoped, a Swiss company will custom design you one, for a measly $40 000. They have 14 naming experts, 4 historians, 12 translators, and two trademark attorneys who will work for 100 hours to create a baby name list for you. All elements of the name will have a positive meaning, and they often combine words in a new order, or use vocabulary words that haven’t been used as names before. The trouble is that the company is called Erfolgswelle (it means “wave of success” in German), which doesn’t inspire confidence in their naming abilities.

You can also go the cheapie option, and crowd source your baby name, like north-coast NSW inventor Cedar and his partner Kylie did. Their baby came early, and he was a boy when they were expecting a girl, so they didn’t have any baby names planned. Cedar and his dad had already used crowd funding for their innovative bee hive, so naturally saw crowd sourcing the baby name as an extension. So far, the most popular baby name is Buzz.

And why does your baby need a unique baby name? So they can start building their personal brand, for we are assured that in the future there will be no such things as a CV, and employers will instead be making hiring decisions based on your personal website (preferably with its own .com) and social media strategies. Already nine year-old surfer Winter Vincent has his own Instagram, Facebook and Vimeo, and has attracted sponsors through his charity work and his “amazing name”. And Millie-Belle Diamond is only 14-months old but already earns up to $250 a post on Instagram flogging teeny-size fashion brands. Don’t Winter Vincent and Millie-Belle Diamond already sound like brand names? And they didn’t cost $40 000 or require a crowd to pitch in, so if you want an amazing name to brand your baby, you can do it yourself quite successfully.

(Photo of Millie-Belle Diamond from Instagram)