There is a company that promises to come up with a list of names for your new baby that are—as much as baby names can possibly be—unique. Erfolgswelle, based in Switzerland, employs 14 naming experts, 12 translators, and four historians, as well as two trademark attorneys who work to ensure that baby names don’t conflict with existing companies and products. All of these professionals—for the hefty sum of $31,000—will spend around 100 hours generating a list of 15 to 25 unique-ish names for new parents to choose among as they’re naming their new bundles of joy. (Joy, which as of 2014 was the 462nd most popular girls’ name in the United States, will ostensibly not be included on such a list.)
Erfolgswelle has a business not just because there are people in the world with $31,000 lying around to finance its services, but because there can be a game-theory component to baby-naming. While some parents choose traditional names for their kids, and many others choose family names, and many others choose names that have been lifted from pop culture—Khaleesi has risen in popularity over the past couple of years—many other new parents seek unusual names that, they hope, will help their kids stand out rather than fit in. As the sociologist Philip Cohen put it, exploring the precipitous decline of the name Mary in recent years, “Conformity to tradition has been replaced by conformity to individuality.”