Would you pay big for a baby name? (Bill Siel /The Kenosha News via AP)
Crib, car seat, baby wipe warmer—there are so many things expectant parents need to buy. Here's something else for the shopping list: a baby-naming consultant. And "the ultimate exercise in personal branding," as Quartz puts it, is not cheap.
Swiss branding firm Erfolgswelle, for instance, charges more than $29,000 to choose the perfect moniker for a soon-to-arrive bundle of joy, Bloomberg reports. Agency head Marc Hauser says his team spends about 100 hours coming up with the perfect name, which includes verifying there's no trademark on the name and consulting historians to determine whether a potential name has "an aggravating past." He uses his own name—Marc—as an example, saying his firm wouldn't suggest it because it's linked to an ancient Roman god of war.
If you'd rather squirrel away that 30 grand, say for a college fund, New York-based My Name for Life will help you name junior starting at several hundred dollars.
If a baby namer knows what they're doing, "it's worth every penny," Albert Mehrabian, who wrote The Baby Name Report Card, tells Bloomberg's Polly Mosendz.
(He gave her name a B-, and here he explains why "Chad" scores a 98 but "Bud" scores a 2.) Quartz quips that instead of paying, you could just turn to your in-laws, who "will probably be happy to provide you with loads of advice for free." Or maybe for something sweeter: In October the New York Times reported on cases in which would-be grandparents have given their own kids everything from $10,000 to the promise of a family business in exchange for the right to name their grandchild.
(Here are some free suggestions for unusual baby names.)
This article originally appeared on Newser: Buy Your Kid a Name for $30K
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