This Professional Baby Namer Charges Up To $10,000 Per Kid
Last year, Taylor A. Humphrey helped name over 100 kids.
There’s a job for everything now. Taylor A. Humphrey made over $150,000 last year by helping name people’s babies after launching her professional baby-naming business, “What’s In A Baby Name?” in 2015.
Humphrey sat down with The New Yorker to talk about everything from how she got started to how she approaches naming babies.
“If you look at the most popular baby names, it’s such a telltale sign of our cultural values and our aspirations,” she says, explaining that she’s always had a love of names and their meanings.
The New Yorker and NYU graduate has been a screenwriter, a matchmaker, a fundraiser, and an event planner. And in addition to helping people name their babies, she’s also billed as a doula and a reiki practitioner.
As far as her baby name services, she says she does everything from a simple phone consultations to in-depth research that includes a questionnaire, family tree research, and more. The $10,000 option gets you a name that’s in line with the parent’s brand. Yes, brand.
Some of Humphrey’s recent clients include a woman who was feeling name regret for her 3-month-old baby Isla (because everyone was pronouncing it wrong), a couple who thought their name choice was too close to the baby of a colleague (Soren and Oren), and a French-Lebanese couple living in the United States who wanted a baby name that worked in all three cultures (they went with Humphrey’s first choice: Chloe).
Some parents just run out of names after three or four kids, Humphrey said, while others are perfectionists who want to make sure their choice is just right for their baby, their family, and this moment in time.
If you don’t have $10,000 burning a hole in your maternity jeans, Humphrey gives a ton of great baby name advice out on her popular Instagram and TikTok accounts at no charge.
On TikTok, she shares name ideas for siblings, guesses at celebrity baby name picks, and talks about controversies like baby name stealing.
She also shares some cute baby name memes.
Sure, $10,000 is steep, but she seems to be providing a service that some parents want — and she seems to do a good job at it. And honestly: what a dream job to think of baby names all day!
