Byname: Baby Name Builder

Axonite

In-app purchases

About this app

Byname™ is a baby name builder. Swipe names on your own or with a partner, keep the ones you like, then put a first and a middle together and hear how the full name sounds.

You'll never be shown the same name twice. Change the filters, close the app for a month, switch phones: a name you already decided on stays gone.

With a partner, you swipe blind. Neither of you sees what the other picked until you both like the same name, so nobody has to defend a favorite before they're ready to. Whole names work the same way. If you each build the same one, you both find out.

One optional unlock, bought once by either of you, covers you both on both your phones. No subscription, and no advertising in any tier.

OVER 40,000 NAMES, FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD
Names from 76 origins across 15 language families: Greek, Germanic, Semitic, Romance, South Asian, Slavic, African, Celtic, Nordic, Persian, East Asian, Indigenous American, Pacific and Southeast Asian. More than 29,000 carry a meaning, an origin and how to say it out loud. Over 18,000 have nicknames. Every name has a century of US popularity data.

FOUR PLACES, NOT ONE SCREEN
Swipe is where a name starts, and you judge each one once. What you keep lands in My List, where you say on the row whether it is a first name, a middle name, or both. Build is the workbench: a first and a middle over your last name, with a warning when the initials spell something nobody wants. Then Decide, which is the bracket, the crown and the card. A first name was never the finished thing.

A name you turned down isn't gone for good. You can go back through your own passes and see them again as middle names, and anything you turn down twice stays down. Your partner can ask you to look again, and never learns what you chose.

THREE LISTS: BOY, GIRL AND UNISEX
Boy names, girl names and unisex names each get their own deck, with their own progress and their own matches. What you decide in one has no bearing on the others.

FIND THE KIND OF NAME YOU'RE AFTER
Filter by origin, by era, by syllable count, by length, and by how common a name is. That is how you find something short, something old-fashioned, or something nobody else on your street has heard of. Search by name when you already have one in mind, and the search reads nicknames as well as full names.

WHAT YOU GET FOR FREE
• The full catalog, all of it
• Unlimited swiping, no daily limit, no countdown
• Every filter: popularity, origin, era, syllables, length
• Search, for when you already have a name in mind
• Undo, for the swipe you didn't mean
• Your likes, your matches, and the names you passed on
• Up to three of your own names in the deck
• Full names built on every first name, uncapped
• Shuffle, for whole names dealt at random from your list
• Works offline, because the catalog lives on your phone
• No account, and nothing collected about you

WHAT THE ONE-OFF UNLOCK ADDS
• More than 40 curated collections, from heritage to vintage to short and sweet
• A pool of names from your families, the ones with an argument attached
• Unlimited names of your own
• A shortlist, with your own notes on each name
• Export, to get your shortlist out
• Last name fit, so you can hear a name against yours
• Sibling fit, for a name that has to sit next to one you chose
• Eight more looks for the share card, from whimsical to plain nerdy
• Both of your names on one card, for when you're not finding out

BEFORE YOU INSTALL
Do we both have to buy it? No. One purchase covers the room, so whichever of you taps it, you both get everything.
Can I use it without a partner? Yes. Solo is the default, and the swiping, the filters and the search all work with nobody else involved.
Do I need an account? No. There's no sign up and no password.

You can start this in the first weeks of a pregnancy, or leave it until there's a shortlist and two stubborn opinions. Mostly it happens at 11pm, when you're both too tired to argue and still want to get somewhere. That's who it's for.

What’s new

Various bug fixes. Thank you for using Byname!