The woman left nursing to be professional baby namer: inside her consultant (exclusively)

• Colleen beaten – virally known as naming Bebe on social media – left her job as a nurse practitioner in 2022 to conduct her lifelong passion: baby names.
• Mom to Tre is an expert on naming statistics and new monikers trends. She takes on expecting parents as customers for $ 300 to $ 400 consultations before offering her suggestions.
• Beaten recently imprisoned their expertise to paper for their new book, Naming Bebe: an interactive guide to select the baby name you love, which will be released on June 10.

Choosing a baby name is not a decision to be made easily. Parents have the task of giving their children the first part of an identity, and there are often several factors to consider – family traditions, a desire for a sibling moniker for compatibility or a favorite letter to lead.

Then, with all this in mind, parents can meet some dilemma. Does it sound right with our last name? Will the child have a sweet nickname? Is there another spelling we should use? Is there something people can easily pronounce?

Is Elsa too Frozen? Can we really go with Karen in this social climate? And how Could I possibly get my partner to agree with me about any of my favorite names?

Suddenly, the stress is clouded. But there is no need to panic. Instead of running up and down an ever -growing list of names, postponing an expert. Go into Colleen beaten, a professional baby name consultant who has spent his entire life consumed by the name game.

“Everywhere I look at my house – on a coupon, on my child’s calendar, on a scrap piece – there are only names everywhere,” says the blows exclusively. “On my computer I only have all these sticky notes that are just naming lists. Next to me I have a notebook full of name lists, I’m always brainstorming names.”

From a young age, she peeled through books on baby names and held magazines where she noted her favorites. When her friends began to have children, she made some unofficial consultations, and she always joked about taking her passions to the professional scene. However, the idea did not take full form until 2022, when she took maternity leave from her job as a nurse.

For starters, she launched a website and published it on local mom groups on Facebook. In the first year she only took on a few customers, but she also started posting it on it Tiktok and Instagram. It didn’t take long before her videos got viral that she decided to quit her nurse job to become a full -time adviser for parents in search of the perfect name.

“It was the same way I hit the moment. It was the right place, the right time. The baby name began to have a moment,” reflects the beat. “Pretty fast, it only increased my business.”

In addition to launch Her professional consulting serviceShe also wrote her book Naming Bebe: an interactive guide to select the baby name you loveWhich is Currently available for pre -order before the publication on June 10.

The work’s work is usually carried out on a zoom conversation with the family, although she offers a “bite” alternative if parents just want her to consider a list of already established alternatives. She calls this shorter version “Name 911”, and her shorter input is priced at $ 50.

The full intense – which costs about $ 300 to $ 400 – is a deep dive in the family’s general perception of what they are looking for, their current choice and what criteria they work with. After the conversation, her customers send a PDF of her name ideas for them, complete with explanations of why she thinks it is a good fit, plus the popular ranking for each.

“I have a bunch of names, and then they get a list of raw names that I also think are worth considering,” she notes.

Parents usually come to the beat with some common questions. “A big is cohesion with siblings. Another big is popularity,” says the Boston-based expert. “Many people will be like, ‘We love this name, but it feels popular, it feels trendy.'”

Trendness can be contextualized and quantified with data. When they have looked at the number of children who have been given a certain name, the beat will push a little harder into the issue.

“Well, how popular is it? How do it compare with other names on your list, and what does it really mean? What do you care about? Do you want your child to be the only thing with that name in the class?” She offers, for example, in ways she can deal with problems.

The nature’s natural, long -term interest in naming patterns has paid off, as it is now absolutely necessary for her business that she keeps her finger on the pulse. She constantly follows EBBS and flows with name trends and what affects them.

Some names can skyrocket in popularity in the midst of cultural changes and news bolts, while others will release due to overuse and then circulate back decades later. Right now she sees the decline of infants called what she calls “older gen Z name”, the big ones in the early 2000s.

“Think like Peyton and Reagan and people who get creative with these spellings, like Peytyn, they start to fall from grace,” mother tells Tre. “And then Baby Boomer – Name – So Karen, Linda, Janet – they don’t make so hot.”

Millennial – Name like Courtney, Jennifer, Stephanie and Kay – as well as the kind of own Colleen, she admits – is also on the decline, but Retro is not completely out.

The “vintage names” of past generations swing in use, adding the beats, points to examples such as Evelyn, Hazel and Violet for girls and Harvey, Archie and Oscar for boys.

“Many of your grandparents’ names are starting to come back,” says the beat. “When I was a nurse I had this patient named June, and once I was like,” Did you know your name is back? “And she couldn’t believe it.”

In addition to more common client issues about trends and popularity, people often approach the name consultant with more random “holdups” and questions with less simple answers. The beat is reminiscent of a time when someone was enough to say that they named their puppy something “very similar” as a moniker they wanted to give their future daughter. Think: The dog is called Lila, and they thought Lola for a girl.

The advice of the beats? Change the dog’s name. “I feel that most people would be like,” oh, it’s not that big. Who knows what’s going to happen? “, She adds.” But I’ve had so many people to say: ‘We wish we had not used this name for our dog.’ So it’s just a dog, change the name. “

For the most part, families are satisfied with the PDF battles send after a meeting. Early in her professional name-developing career, she got a person to reject all her ideas, but then everything was carried out via email. The strokes would give their customers a questionnaire to fill in, and in the bad case she wished the person had answered in more detail. The reduced evaluation, and the beats returned with a brand new list of names.

She holds an open dialogue with her clients, lets them marinate over alternatives and reply later if needed. She extends that line of communication even after the child arrives and the birth certificate is completed, and in some cases the help of the beats is still needed even then. She says that Baby Name -Anger is actually quite common.

“It’s hard to tease postpartum hormones. Will you come to it? Will any name satisfy you?” She tells people. “Some people come to me and they are,” 100%, we know this is the wrong name. We want to change it. “And then it’s like” good, let’s chat through what would be a good alternative to change it to. “For many people they just try to make a decision and it eats on them.”

She has help with name changes for 4 weeks, but more recently she has met people who want to make the change a year after the child’s arrival. Anyway, the first step is to evaluate why parents feel regret.

“Some people are like,“ I was too tired. I gave in my partner’s favorite choice, “says the blows.” Some people are like, “This was the name we liked all the time, and then we used it and we said it loudly and we were like, oh my God, we hate how this sounds.”

While the blows are completely willing to take on these cases, she admits that she does not often feel completely suitable for the job of going parents through such emotions. “I always feel that a therapist would be better than me,” she notes.

In order to avoid such situations, the struck has important advice to expect parents in search of the perfect baby name. One of her main suggestions is that families avoid over -analyzes during the process and calculate their main priorities in advance.

“There are so many small things that we get stuck on. When you are thinking about the same thing over and over again for nine months, you can start other guess. Try not to think about the little things, like how it sounds with your last name,” she says. “It doesn’t have to be perfect.”

Personally, the only thing that beaten itself would not do because both a mother of three and a naming expert give siblings names that sound very similar. “I am very anti-matchy-matchy,” she says, referring to an example that dewar brothers Jeremi and Jedidiah. “Everyone needs their own name.”

In the attempt to avoid all lovers of the quarrel along the line, the beat thinks that couples should find out if their name ideas are compatible early – it is actually something they should discuss when navigating their own compatibility.

“Talk about names on the first date, just to make sure he or she has a good style,” she adds. “It’s such a common problem, my partner and I can’t agree on a baby name.”

If partners come across that kind of disagreement, it says it is better to “make it fun” when you set up a fair fight for your favorite name.

“I think many times I feel that women stop compromising. They like their partner’s names enough to use it, but I think you can continue to search and try to find a name that you both love just as much,” she says. “If you have trouble getting your partner to agree on a name, make a powerpoint and try to get them on board with it. Never give up a name. Your partner can always come to it.”