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Baby names: A new hospital service

Baby names are the latest hospital service at the Central Baptist Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky. The medical center boats an app and website that offer suggestions and virtual baby blankets for parents struggling over monikers for their babies-to-be.

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Melanie Stetson Freeman
Baby names can be a source of stress for many parents-to-be. Now, a new hospital service in Lexington, KY helps moms and dads generate names for their newborns. (Disclaimer: the babies in this photo already have names. They are in Massachusetts, doing yoga. And we don't know if any of their names were vetted on Facebook. We're honest.)

We read with interest a report today coming out of Lexington, Kentucky, where the Central Baptist Hospital is apparently helping out parents who just can’t make up their minds about a name for their new bundle of joy.

Baby names, it sees, are the latest hospital service here; the medical center is offering a mobile app and a website that lets parents search through top baby names and sort through various categories of inspiration, such as athletes (think Metta World Peace), Disney characters (not even going there), and country music stars.

If that’s not enough, a user can create virtual “baby blankets” to see how different name combinations might look on monogrammed baby gear. (You can change the colors, too.)  Then, you can tweet, pin or post the name idea on Facebook, so everyone you know (and some you don’t) can tell you about that obnoxious girl in second grade who had the very same name and how you simply can’t name your child that because an ex boyfriend from high school was also named Jacob, or whatever, and so on and so on....

Helpful, no?

Of course, the Central Baptist Hospital app is only one of about a bazillion million baby name aids out there, from old fashioned books to websites to - if you really want to start obsessing - the U.S. Social Security Administration archive of popular baby names.

(This site, if you have been missing out on this fantastically mesmerizing procrastination tool, lets you search for not only the top names of any possible decade, but for how any particular name has ebbed and flowed out of popularity. You can watch the Jennifers take over the Barbaras and then lose out to the Madisons, and then wonder why, suddenly, people all over the country decided to name their daughters Isabella and Sophia. All on one site. Take that, deadline.)

But we think the fact that a hospital is providing its own app adds a nice little twist to the baby naming assistance industry. I mean, you could wait until the very last minute here and still be able to get some institutional support for this all important decision.

So of course, intrepid reporters that we are, we decided to check out some of the names the mamas and papas to be at the Central Baptist Hospital were considering.

There are some Aidens and Annas, a Hunter and a Mia. But the most shared name? Schwarzenneger Churchill Ted. 

Hmmmm...

Better do some thinking ahead of time during those nine months.

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