Naming a baby used to mean picking between Grandma’s middle name and whatever was trending on the playground. Now, you can shell out $30k to a woman in San Francisco who, apparently, creates the “perfect” identity for your baby.
Taylor A. Humphrey has made a full-time career out of naming other people’s kids. She isn’t scrolling through a baby book and picking at random. Humphrey, 37, runs what amounts to a boutique naming agency, complete with spreadsheets, questionnaires, and tiered packages that climb from a $200 email to a $30,000 “VIP treatment.”
“There’s a lot more to this job than people realize,” Humphrey told the San Francisco Chronicle. She started posting about her obsession with names more than a decade ago, back when her services cost closer to $1,500.
In 2020 alone, she named over 100 babies, pulling in $150,000. These days, her Instagram and TikTok following has passed 100,000, and her portfolio boasts more than 500 babies stamped with names she helped select.
Meet the Woman Who Will Name Your Baby for $30K
Clients, often wealthy and sometimes famous, come looking for names that feel curated rather than pulled from a baby book. Humphrey uses branding questionnaires, family genealogists, and even group brainstorming sessions to land on something that feels unique without veering into “why did you do that to your child” territory. Her add-ons can include “baby name branding,” designing a family aesthetic, or mining the family tree for hidden gems.
The requests are oddly specific: uncommon but not bizarre, modern but not disposable, strong but not overbearing. Sometimes the job tilts toward therapy. She mediates between couples who can’t agree, or calms down anxious parents who feel like the wrong syllable might ruin their kid’s future. “Sometimes I get calls from clients that are so urgent that I need to drop everything,” she admitted.
While some parents think of it as insurance against a regrettable choice, unsurprisingly, critics online have made her a punchline. The New Yorker profiled her in 2021, sparking a wave of mockery and memes that hasn’t really stopped. Humphrey doesn’t deny the absurdity. “It’s a little embarrassing when you get made fun of on the internet,” she told the Chronicle. “But at the same time, I’m like, ‘Well, it is silly.’ I come up with baby names for a living.”
Silly or not, the business is booming. With a backlog of clients and a market of parents who treat names like brand launches, Humphrey has managed to put a price tag on identity itself. And people are lining up to pay it.
Yes…this is the world we live in.
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