piping technology: Baby Names for iPhone and iPad review

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Baby Names for iPhone and iPad review

If you're a parent-to-be, then you have been given the difficult task of choosing a name for your child, and with Baby Names for iPhone and iPad, you can keep a running list with you at all times. You can also look up thousands of names, mark your favorites, check their meanings, and more.

Baby Names features a very simple interface with 5 tabs: Popular, A-Z, Origins, Search, and Favorites. The Popular tab gives you a bunch of a different top lists to search for names. There's the traditional most popular names list as well as other categories such as ancient, beautiful, color, flowers and trees, old time, spring, strong, summer, and trending names. There are 23 of these idea lists.

The A-Z tab is simply two lists of all the boy and girl names stored in the app. They are organized alphabetically and you can tap on the alphabet on the right to quickly scroll through the lists.

The Origins tab lets you organize names by origin.

From the Search tab, you can specifically search for a specific name, meaning, origin, trend, popularity, and gender. Or you can simply ask for a random name.

When you view a name, it will be largely displayed at the top of the screen with the origin and pronunciation below it, followed by the meaning of the name. Next is a long list of where that name fell on the popularity list since as far back as possible. For example, the name Sarah goes back all the way to 1880. The information for 2012 isn't available, but I assume there will be an update addressing that in the near future.

When you come across a name you really like, you can mark it as a favorite to easily reference. You can also choose to show your last name and a middle name. Unfortunately, you are only allowed to show one middle name at a time. I wish there was a way to mix and match however you want. For example, seeing both "Lucy Danae" and "Lucy Danielle" in the favorites list would be nice.

One of the disappointing features of the Favorites list is that it does not sync to other devices. Choosing a child's name is (typically) the decision of two parents, so it would be awesome if Baby Names could sync favorites between devices, especially since it was also recently updated as a universal app for iPhone and iPad.

Baby Names is free to download, but is more like a free trial because it doesn't give access to all the features or names unless you upgrade to the premium version with the in-app purchase for $1.99. Some users feel tricked when the upgrade prompt appears, but I actually like that Baby Names is free to try out. You get to spend enough time in it to know if you like it or not. The premium upgrade gives you access to over 60,000 names, Baby Name meanings, origins, pronunciations, popularity records, the ability to save and share names, add middle, last, and custom names, and removes ads.

The good

Over 60,000 boy and girl names
Idea lists
Super search: by name, meaning, popularity, gender or random
Browse for names by origin or popularity
See detailed information about each name including pronunciation, meaning, gender, origin, and popularity
Create, edit, and reorder your own favorites list
Share via email or Twitter
Add a middle name or last name
Add your own name

The bad

Can only choose one middle name at a time
2012 popularity information not yet available
No iCloud sync between devices

The bottom line

I used Baby Names during both my pregnancies and found it to be a huge help. For my first, I was only looking for a middle name, but for my second, I was specifically looking for names that began with L or D, so I spent a lot of time in the A-Z list. Having the favorites list was so awesome to reference when my husband and I would discuss possible names. Ultimately, we went with a middle name for my second daughter that I would not have even considered had it not been for Baby Names.