™
A baby name builder. Swipe names on your own or with a partner, keep the ones you like, then put a first and a middle together over your last name and see how the whole thing reads.
In development. Not yet released.
What it is
Most of the apps for this feel like either a spreadsheet or a game show. Byname™ is quieter than that. It is built for the sofa, a few names an evening, over as many evenings as it takes.
It works on your own. The catalog, the filters, the search, the builder and the bracket all run on one phone with nobody else involved, and pairing with a partner is optional.
The swipe deck is one of six ways a name gets in. You can search for one you already have in mind, open a collection, pull from a pool of names in your families, type a name that is not in the catalog, or go back through the ones you passed on.
A first name on its own is rarely the finished decision. Names you keep land in your list, where you mark whether each one is a first name, a middle name or both. From there you put a first and a middle together over your last name and hear how it reads.
Used together, you swipe blind. Neither of you sees what the other picked until you have both said yes to the same name, and that is a match. Whole names work the same way: build the same first and middle as your partner and you both find out.
Your partner does not see the names you passed on. One thing crosses that line and it goes one way. They can ask you to look at a name again, which tells you they want it. Opening it is your own tap, the cards it deals look like every other card, and they are never told what you decided.
Screens
The bar along the bottom of the app has four entries. Swipe is the deck, with the five other ways to find a name behind it. My List is everything you kept. Build is where a first and a middle go together over your last name. Decide is the bracket and the crown. The last screen below is not a tab, it is what a match looks like when one lands. Click any of them to see it full size.
Screens from a build in progress. The names in them are test data.
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How it is built
There is one deck, so a name is judged once. Changing your filters will not bring it round again, and neither will closing the app and picking it up later. The one way to see a pass again is a second look, where you go back through your own passes and meet them as middle names. A name turned down there stays down.
Nothing on a card hints at what your partner made of it. There are no counts and no badges to read anything into, and a name they have moved up your deck looks like every other name.
Where a name can go is a property of the name. Everything you keep is allowed in both slots until you say otherwise, and you say so on its row in your list.
A first name, a middle name and your last name are handled as one thing. The app says where one name runs into the next and what the initials spell.
Boy names, girl names and unisex names each get their own deck, with their own progress and their own matches. What you decide in one has no bearing on the others.
The catalog lives on the device. Rating and browsing names work with no connection at all. Pairing needs one, and so does anything the app sends us about itself.
No adverts anywhere in the app, whether or not you have paid for it. It carries no advertising identifier, and nothing in it is building a picture of you.
Swiping is never metered: no daily limit and no countdown. The whole catalog is there from the first card, with every filter, the search, undo, and the names you liked.
The unlock adds the collections, the pool of family names, ranking and notes on a shortlist, export, and how a name sits against your last name or against a brother or sister. It is bought once, by either of you, and it covers you both. There is no subscription, and nobody is stopped from rating names because their partner is the one who paid.
Availability
Byname is being built for iPhone, iPad and Android. It has not been released. The store links will appear here when it has.
Privacy
Used on your own, the names you rate stay on the handset and no account is created. Pairing with a partner is the point at which your ratings start being shared. Two things the app sends are about itself: a fault report when part of it breaks, and a short record each time it opens saying whether the run before it ended cleanly. Neither carries a name from the catalog or anything you typed, and one switch in Settings stops both. The policy sets out what each of them contains.
Contact
The support page covers getting a room back, restoring a purchase, and reporting a fault. Anything it doesn't answer, including anything on this page, goes to support@axoniteglobal.com.
Byname is published by Axonite Global LLC. For general and business inquiries, write to hello@axoniteglobal.com.