If you and your partner have tried to pick a name together, you already know the problem. One of you loves it. The other one is quiet for a moment and then says 'it's fine.' That is not agreement. That is one person getting their way and the other person not wanting a row about it.
The latest wave of baby naming tools has decided the solution to this is swiping. You both scroll through a database, swipe right on the names you like, and wherever your choices overlap - that is your shortlist. It is tidy. It is fast. And it almost certainly produces a name that neither of you loves as much as you think you do.
Nameberry recently launched exactly this mechanic on its iOS and Android apps. It is well designed and the database behind it is genuinely impressive. But the swipe model has a structural problem that no amount of polish can fix: it starts from a list that already exists, and it asks you to react to names rather than understand what you actually want. When two people swipe through the same database and their right-swipes overlap, what you get is the intersection of two sets of surface-level reactions. Not a name. A compromise.
findaname.app works from the opposite direction.
Before a single name appears, you each take a ten-question quiz. The questions are not 'do you prefer long names or short ones.' They go deeper than that - into the feeling you want the name to carry, the heritage that matters to you, the kind of person you hope your child will grow into, the sounds that feel right in your family's mouths. Your partner takes the same quiz separately, without seeing your answers first.
Then the AI generates names from your combined answers. Not from a database. Not from a list of names that already exist somewhere waiting to be found. From what you actually said.
This is why findaname.app describes itself as a baby name app for couples rather than a name discovery tool. Discovery implies the name was already there, waiting. What findaname.app does is closer to building - producing options that reflect who you both are rather than what is already trending.
The difference shows up most clearly in how partners feel about the result. When two people swipe a database together, they each know the other person rejected hundreds of names to get there. There is a silent negotiation happening underneath the swiping, and both of you are aware of it. When the quiz generates a name like Idris, or Rosamund, or Stellan - names that came out of your specific answers - neither partner is reacting to something the other one picked. You are both seeing it for the first time, and it arrived because of both of you.
That changes the conversation. It also changes the feeling of the name itself.
The swipe model is not wrong for everyone. If you want to move quickly through a large database and see where you and your partner naturally overlap, it can surface options you would not have thought of on your own. But it does not know anything about you. It cannot know that you care deeply about names with a Welsh sound, or that your partner grew up in a family where names were always one syllable, or that you both quietly want something that nobody in the playground will already have. The database does not ask.
findaname.app asks.
There is also a subtler issue with the swipe-and-match model: it puts both partners in the position of vetoing each other's choices without ever discussing them. You swipe right on Cillian. Your partner swipes left. You never know that. The name disappears and no conversation happens. Over time, the process teaches both of you to compress your taste into a thumbs up or down, which is not how most people experience the weight of naming a child.
The quiz model holds space for that weight. It takes about three minutes per person, but those three minutes ask you to think about things you may not have made explicit to each other yet. That is the actual value - not the names themselves but the clarity the questions produce.
If you are looking for a baby name app for couples that does more than find where your swiping habits overlap, the quiz is worth three minutes of your time. findaname.app.com - the quiz takes about three minutes each, and you share results when you are both done.