If you don’t want to name your baby, you can pay someone else to do it

When you have a baby on the way, you have a lot to worry about: finding the right doctor, eating the right foods, reading the right parenting books, setting up the nursery, buying adorable clothes, taking baby bump photos, giving birth, learning how to take care of an actual human, forgetting everything you learned in the parenting books, etc. All that times a million.

Basically, you have a lot to do.

And for some super busy parents-to-be, the last thing they want to deal with is deciding on a name for the baby (while for others, they’ve had the baby names picked out for at least 15 years… aka, me). Not because they don’t care, but because decisions are hard. Especially a decision that will be a part the child’s life forever. Also, coming up with something creative, original, or just something that suits you and your family in general can be time-consuming and hard.

That’s why services are popping up throughout the U.S. and Europe that will choose your baby’s name so you don’t have to. But it’s not cheap.

One agency in Switzerland charges $29,000 to pick out a name. They spend two or three weeks and around 100 hours coming up with the best option. They check the history of the name to make sure it doesn’t come equipped with an “aggravating past” — like Severus Snape or Jeffrey Dahmer, we imagine. Also, they make sure the name hasn’t been trademarked. You know, in case your offspring is the next Madonna or President (which is totally possibly… we aren’t doubting your genetic pool).

Sherri Suzanne, who runs New York’s My Name for Life, works with culture experts to ensure the name they choose fits with your family background.

“While some criteria, like name popularity, can be measured and ranked objectively, I find that other qualities, like morality of a name or likelihood for success, are very subjective and vary from person to person, community to community and particularly generation to generation,” Suzanne told Bloomberg.

So if you happen to have an extra 20 or 30 grand laying around and the strong desire to let someone else choose your child’s name, this could be your solution. Or you could just, you know, Google it.

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