What Happens When You Let the Internet Name a Baby

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By Fran Berkman2014-01-13 22:54:40 UTC

A Canadian couple is expecting to bring a newborn girl into the world in early April — a little girl who might bear the name Megatron Doge.

The Internet is picking her name (well, sort of). Stephen McLaughlin, who describes himself as a "software developer, amateur baby namer and parent" in his Twitter bio, recently launched a website called NameMyDaughter.com, where Internet users can vote for his unborn daughter's first and middle names.

"My name is Stephen and much to the disbelief of my wife, I have decided to let the Internet name* my daughter," McLaughlin wrote on the site. The asterisk in the statement indicates that the couple is reserving the right to make the final decision, which means the girl probably won't end up with the name Streetlamp Salad (both Streetlamp and Salad hold spots in the top 15).

As of Monday afternoon, the leading candidate is Amelia Mae, but the jury is still undecided. When the Daily Dot first reported on the name-a-baby contest over the weekend, the frontrunner was Luna Mae. Luna has since slipped to fourth place for first names, behind Cthulhu and LaQuisha, and is one ahead of Megatron.

Current runners-up for the baby's middle name include All-Spark, Rose, Le-Dash-A, Pond, Salad and Doge.

Users can submit names to NameMyDaughter.com and vote for as many names as they want, once per day. In a recent AMA session on Reddit, McLaughlin said he would "prefer not to have to remove anything from the list," but added that he has already moderated a few sexual positions and sexually transmitted infections.

As a sign of the voting's divisiveness thus far, Zelda is currently in seventh place, one ahead of Not Zelda. It's shaping up to be an epic battle of trolls versus those who don't want a little girl to have a weird name. Rather than ending in death like a Zelda battle, though, this story will end with new life.

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Image: Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images

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